Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts (Christianity and Culture: Issues in Teaching Research)

APPROACHING MEDIEVAL ENGLISH ANCHORITIC AND MYSTICAL TEXTS

This volume seeks to explore the origins, context and content of the anchoritic and mystical texts produced in England during the Middle Ages and to examine the ways in which these texts may be studied and taught today. It foregrounds issues of context and interaction, seeking both to position medieval spiritual writings against a surprisingly wide range of contemporary contexts and to face the challenge of making these texts accessible to a wider readership. Contributions by leading international scholars in the field incorporate historical, literary and theological perspectives and offer critical approaches and background material which will inform both research and teaching. The approaches to Middle English anchoritic and mystical texts suggested in this volume are many and varied. In this they reflect the richness and complexity of the contexts from which these writings emerged. These essays are offered as part of an ongoing exploration of aspects of medieval spirituality which provide invaluable insights into the interaction between medieval culture and belief.

CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE ISSUES IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH ISSN 1740–9896

Series Editors Dee Dyas Helen Phillips

The volumes in this series focus on key topics in the cultures of the past and the role of religion in these cultures. Each offers a collection of new essays by leading scholars, which aim to cover the major subjects in a particular area or period, and to provide teachers, researchers and students with the best of the current thinking on the subject. They also discuss the issues involved in teaching, in an objective way, the often distant and sometimes alien concepts of the religious cultures of past centuries in a modern, secular, multi-cultural society.

Already published 1. The Christian Tradition in Anglo-Saxon England: Approaches to Current Scholarship and Teaching edited by Paul Cavill

APPROACHING MEDIEVAL ENGLISH ANCHORITIC AND MYSTICAL TEXTS

Edited by DEE DYAS VALERIE EDDEN ROGER ELLIS

D. S. BREWER

© Editors and Contributors 2005 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 The right of the contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published 2005 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 1 84384 049 9

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Approaching medieval English anchoritic and mystical texts / edited by Dee Dyas, Valerie Edden, Roger Ellis. p. cm. – (Christianity and culture, ISSN 1740–9896) Summary: “Essays suggesting new ways of studying the crucial but sometimes difficult range of medieval mystical material” – Provided by publisher. Includes index. ISBN 1–84384–049–9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Christian literature, English (Middle) – History and criticism. 2. Christian literature, Latin (Medieval and modern) – England – History and criticism. 3. Mysticism – England – History – Middle Ages, 600–1500. 4. Hermits – England. 5. Christian literature, English (Middle) – Study and teaching. 6. Christian literature, Latin (Medieval and modern) – England – Study and teaching. 7. Mysticism – England – History – Middle Ages, 600–1500 – Study and teaching. 8. Hermits – England – Study and teaching. I. Dyas, Dee. II. Edden, Valerie. III. Ellis, Roger, 1943 May 16– IV. Title. V. Series. BV5077.G7A67 2005 248.2'2'09420902 – dc 22 2005004963

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Contents List of Illustrations General Editors’ Preface List of Contributors Abbreviations Introduction

vii ix x xi xiii

PART I ANCHORITISM AND MYSTICISM: SOME CONTEXTS 1. E. A. JONES Anchorites and Hermits in Historical Context 2. DEE DYAS ‘Wildernesse is Anlich Lif of Ancre Wununge’: The Wilderness and Medieval Anchoritic Spirituality

3 19

3. VALERIE EDDEN The Devotional Life of the Laity in the Lat e Middle Ages

35

4. SANTHA BHATTACHARJI Medieval Contemplation and Mystical Experience

51

PART II APPROACHES TO SCHOLARSHIP 5. DENIS RENEVEY Richard Rolle

63

6. A. C. SPEARING Language and its Limits: The Cloud of Unknowing and Pearl

75

7. THOMAS H. BESTUL Walter Hilton

87

8. LIZ HERBERT McAVOY ‘And thou, to whom this Booke Shall Come’: Julian of Norwich and her Audience, Past, Present and Future

101

9. BARRY WINDEATT ‘I Use but Comownycacyon and Good Wordys’: Teaching and The Book of Margery Kempe

115

PART III APPROACHES TO TEACHING 10. ALEXANDRA BARRATT Teaching Anchoritic Texts: the Shock of the Old Appendix: Ch. 14 of The Rule of a Recluse, from MS Bodley 423

131 138

11. R. S. ALLEN Introducing the Mystics

145

12. ROGER ELLIS Holy Fictions: Another Approach to the Middle English Mystics

157

13. ANN M. HUTCHISON Approaching Medieval Women Mystics in the Twenty-first Century

175

14. MARION GLASSCOE Contexts for Teaching Julian of Norwich Appendix: ‘Stond wel, moder, under rode’

185 198

APPENDIX TEACHING TOOLS CATHERINE INNES-PARKER Learning by Doing: Margery Kempe and students today

203

DEE DYAS, ROGER ELLIS, ANN M. HUTCHISON Useful terms for students

207

Index

211

Illustrations The Devotional Life of the Laity in the Late Middle Ages Waterperry Parish Church, Walter Curson and his sons. Private collection of David Griffith. Used by permission

36

Contexts for Teaching Julian of Norwich Hereford Cathedral, The Hereford Mappa Mundi. Used by kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust

189

General Editors’ Preface This series addresses the challenge that the study of literature, history and material culture of the past often poses for modern researchers, students and teachers, because the religious assumptions of previous centuries are remote from the worldviews of contemporary people. The volumes in the series aim to provide research, discussion and critical perspectives on the role of religion and the historical inter-relationships of religion, society and culture, each focusing on a particular period or topic. They are designed primarily for those in university research, teaching and study, but their subjects and approaches are also likely to be of interest to readers and teachers more widely. Each volume offers a collection of essays by leading scholars and critics, providing an authoritative and balanced overview of the subject in the light of current research. Central to the aims of the series is a conviction of the importance of the inter-relationship of research and teaching and the belief that the best teaching is that which is informed by the best contemporary research and thinking. The series is produced in association with the Christianity and Culture project, which seeks to explore how past religious culture can be studied and taught in modern multi-cultural, multi-faith, and in many respects secular, societies, in an objective and academic way. While the major part of each volume will be a sequence of specially commissioned essays, designed to provide a comprehensive survey of a topic, and addressing the issues, information and research relevant for an informed and up-to-date study of the religious culture of a past society and culture, volumes will also discuss how they can most effectively be presented, and made accessible, to students. Each book will therefore both give space specifically to consideration of methods of teaching historical religious culture, and contain essays in which teachers in higher education from a range of countries and contexts discuss issues and materials, and suggest approaches and answers.

Contributors R. S. Allen, Queen Mary, University of London Alexandra Barratt, University of Waikato Thomas H. Bestul, University of Illinois at Chicago Santha Bhattacharji, New College, Oxford Dee Dyas, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York Valerie Edden, University of Birmingham Roger Ellis, formerly of the University of Cardiff Marion Glasscoe, formerly of the University of Exeter Liz Herbert McAvoy, University of Wales, Swansea Ann M. Hutchison, York University and Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto Catherine Innes-Parker, University of Prince Edward Island E. A. Jones, University of Exeter Denis Renevey, University of Fribourg A. C. Spearing, University of Virginia Barry Windeatt, Emmanuel College, Cambridge

Abbreviations EETS ES LT n.s. OS PL ST

Early English Text Society Extra Series Long Text new series Original Series Patrologia Latina Short Text

INTRODUCTION

Introduction This volume has two aims: to explore the origins, context and content of the anchoritic and mystical texts produced in England during the Middle Ages, and to examine the ways in which these texts may be studied and taught today. It is a volume that foregrounds issues of context and interaction, seeking both to position medieval spiritual writings against a surprisingly wide range of contemporary contexts and also to face the challenge of making these texts accessible to a wider readership. The volume provides new scholarly and critical essays, incorporating historical, literary and theological perspectives, which are designed to inform both research and teaching. The first four essays, comprising Part I of the book, offer background information necessary for contextualising anchoritic and mystic texts. Jones and Dyas set anchoritic writings in the context of the historical and theological development of the eremitic tradition. Jones outlines the history and practice of medieval English hermits and anchorites, and examines the way in which the anchoritic tradition intersects strikingly with the Middle English mystics; literature produced for an anchoritic milieu in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, including Aelred’s De Institutione Inclusarum and Ancrene Wisse, was readily adapted for new religious purposes in the fourteenth and fifteenth. Dyas examines the biblical and historical origins of the wilderness motif, which crucially, and occasionally paradoxically, interacted with shifting contemporary preoccupations and thus informed and shaped the theory and practice of the anchoritic life in England. Edden charts the spread of monastic devotional practices to the laity, which nurtured a thirst for private prayer and meditation, and surveys individual and corporate manifestations of this lay spirituality, which fuelled the demand for devotional and mystic texts and created a milieu in which some felt themselves compelled to embark on the contemplative life. Bhattacharji traces the origins, development, practice and meaning of ‘contemplation’, a concept frequently taken for granted, yet, as she demonstrates, rewarding closer examination. The second part of the book comprises essays that offer new scholarly and critical approaches to five central figures of the medieval English mystical tradition: Rolle, Hilton, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. The question of methodology, and of the general usefulness of the term ‘mystic’, raised explicitly by Watson’s 1999 essay,1 is acknowledged by both Renevey and Bestul, and informs the practice of several others. Renevey argues for a broader evaluation of Rolle’s achievements as commentator, liturgist and contemplative writer in Latin and English, 1

Nicholas Watson, ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 539–65.

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together with a deeper appreciation of the impact of his writings on late-medieval religion in England. He posits that Rolle’s ability to engage a lay readership and his remarkable popularity in the Middle Ages derive in part from the way he moves easily from one genre to another (like Chaucer) and by his skill in bridging the gap between devotional and contemplative writing. In similar vein, Bestul highlights the importance of recognising connections between writers such as Hilton and their contemporaries in terms of shared concerns and literary and rhetorical techniques. Indeed Bestul suggests that the designation ‘mystic’ when applied to Hilton is ‘especially crippling’, abstracting him from the broader and ‘highly contested religious environment in which he seems to have been actively engaged’. Running through the volume is the conviction that these writers need to be approached on their own terms, insofar as that is possible. Windeatt challenges the modern categorisation of Margery Kempe’s Book as autobiography or autohagiography and accounts of her that dismiss her as ‘little more than an impressionable consumer of the contemplative product of her day’. He asks: ‘What is Margery Kempe’s Book for?’ . . . ‘Is it didactic?’ and offers a reading of it that accepts the centrality of her conversations with Christ and his mother to her account of her inner journey, which is one in which she recounts her own learning rather than aims to teach others. In his illuminating discussion of language and its limits in dealing with the transcendent, Spearing sets The Cloud of Unknowing alongside Pearl and explores the ways in which these largely dissimilar texts are alike in using intensely bodily language to point beyond the bodily sphere. The body is also a central issue for McAvoy who uses feminist theory, developed from the work of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, to argue that Julian transcends the limitations of traditional androcentric thought and writing to include within her vision the whole of humanity and the entirety of the human condition. Part III contains essays on the interface between research and teaching by leading scholars who share and reflect on their extensive experience of teaching in a variety of contexts and evaluate the range of texts and editions available. These essays, which range across material drawn from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, confirm the underlying assumption of Part I, that the flowering of vernacular mystical texts in the late fourteenth and fifteenth century can best be understood with reference to the practices and writings out of which they grew. Barratt reflects on the challenges of reading Ancrene Wisse with undergraduates and presents a persuasive argument for using Aelred’s De Institutione Inclusarum as a way of approaching anchoritic spirituality. Since it provides a concise account of the anchoritic life for Aelred’s sister, it can also serve as an introduction for modern readers, explaining the origins of anchoritic spirituality and giving an account of the daily lives of female anchorites. The section on meditation has the advantage of illustrating not only twelfth-century practice but providing examples of the type of meditative practice that seems to have influenced both Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Ellis’s essay provides an overview of texts and combinations of texts that have worked well in the classroom and suggests reasons why this should be the

INTRODUCTION

xv

case. He follows Barratt in suggesting a medieval text that may in itself serve as an introduction to mystical writing for modern readers: the prologue to the German Dominican’s Horologium Sapientiae, which addresses key questions about the nature and status of mystical texts, and the role of both author and reader within such writing. Allen and Hutchison both reflect on the need to develop appropriate courses to enable present-day students to make sense of the material. Having affirmed the necessity for providing appropriate historical context (a necessity affirmed throughout this volume), Allen outlines three courses that have enabled her to build bridges between the concerns of medieval mystical writers and those of her students. One, on visionaries and heretics, placed mystics among writers who ‘inhabit[ed] the dangerous territory between orthodoxy and heresy’. The second considered women and medieval religion, affording students the opportunity to draw on their experience of gendered approaches to literature in other areas. The third used the contemporary interest in woman and the body to explore medieval mystical writing. Hutchison gives an account of the approaches she has adopted in teaching women mystics, offering a gendered approach that considers the situation of women in the Middle Ages and ways in which the mystics overcame the barriers that stood in the way of their committing their experiences to writing and the transmission of their writings in their own day and down the ages. Glasscoe tackles what is essentially the most difficult and also the most important problem in introducing mystical writing to twenty-first-century readers, showing how she has dealt with the notion of religious experience for those brought up in a wholly secular society. She suggests perspectives that take readers via Emily Dickinson and the Hereford Mappa Mundi to a consideration of the heart of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation. The volume concludes with Innes-Parker’s account of an innovative way to engage students with Margery Kempe, by holding a mock heresy trial. A recurrent theme within the book is the emphasis of the visual within mystical experience. It will come as no surprise, then, that visual art is suggested as a striking way into understanding mystical writing. Glasscoe’s use of the Hereford Mappa Mundi to gloss Julian’s text is an excellent instance of the practice; so is Spearing’s use of the Tres Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry to gloss Pearl and, paradoxically, the Cloud. Hutchison appeals to Pre-Raphaelite art for formal parallels. Edden’s essay begins with a stainedglass window, which reminds us, as do Ellis’s and Jones’s essays, how much easier it is to talk about medieval spirituality on location. The essays in this volume reflect the conviction that medieval mystical writing is better understood within its contexts: the anchoritic tradition (see Jones, Dyas, and Barratt) and the devotional practices of the late Middle Ages, which encouraged private meditation (see Edden, Bhattacharji). Other important contexts, often completely ignored in books on medieval mystical writers, are writings by the same author, as Renevey in particular argues, and other Middle English texts, both secular and religious. Here comparisons are invited with religious lyrics, with Chaucer, with the late fourteenth-century anonymous poem Pearl (see Spearing) and with Langland’s Piers Plowman, written in three

xvi

INTRODUCTION

versions during the last half of the fourteenth century, and also with the writings of the Wycliffites (Lollards) in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. It is also important to avoid insularity. Continental mystical texts circulated widely in England; many were translated into English. While the emphasis of this book is on England, foreign texts figure repeatedly and must be considered as playing a vital role in the life of the English mystics: the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, a sixth-century Syrian monk confused with Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17: 13–34); the writings of Anselm of Bec (1033–1109), archbishop of Canterbury from 1098; the Itinerarium mentis Dei of the Franciscan Bonaventure (c.1217–74), an Italian; the Mirror of Simple Souls of Margaret (Marguerite) Porete (d.1310), a French woman; the Liber de vere fidelium experientia of the Italian Angela of Foligno (1248–1309); the Liber Celestis of Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden (1303–73), especially, as Windeatt notes, ‘the idea of St Bridget’ (p. 118); the Franciscan Pseudo-Bonaventure’s Meditations Vitae Christi, translated into English by Nicholas Love in 1410; and the De discretione spirituum of Jean Gerson (1363–1429), chancellor of the University of Paris. The approaches to Middle English anchoritic and mystical texts suggested in this volume are many and varied. In this they reflect the richness and complexity of the contexts from which these writings emerged. These essays are offered as part of an ongoing exploration of aspects of medieval spirituality which, while posing a considerable challenge to modern readers, also offer invaluable insights into the interaction between medieval culture and belief.

Part I Anchoritism and Mysticism: Some Contexts

1 Hermits and Anchorites in Historical Context E. A. JONES

O

N a hot midsummer Friday on the road from York to Bridlington, probably in 1413, John Kempe finally acceded to his wife Margery’s desire to live a life of chastity.1 Then, Margery’s Book continues, ‘went thei forth toBrydlyngton-ward and also to many other contres and spokyn wyth Goddys servawntys, bothen ankrys and reclusys and many other of owyr Lordys loverys, wyth many worthy clerkys, doctorys of dyvynyte, and bachelers also, in many dyvers placys’ (I.11; 793–7). It was probably on this visit that she first met the anchoress of York (one of several in the city at this date), who on a subsequent occasion would snub her, on account of the reputation she had acquired in the interim (I.50). The male anchorite of the Chapel-in-the-Fields, Norwich, had similarly distanced himself from her as her notoriety increased, but she visited him all the same (I.43). More faithful was her divinely appointed confessor and resolute supporter, the anchorite at the house of Dominican friars in Lynn (I.5).2 Reynold, a hermit of the same town, accompanied her on journeys to Ipswich, Walsingham and Norwich and, after a chance meeting at Syon Abbey, and a certain amount of persuasion, on the return to Lynn (II.1,10). Of all the encounters with solitaries had by this indefatigable seeker-out of ‘ankrys and reclusys’, however, her visit to Julian of Norwich seems to have made the greatest impression. There she gave an account of her experiences and visions, and received encouragement and counsel, enjoying much ‘holy dalyawns’ during the ‘many days that thei were togedyr’ (I.18; 1379–81). For all her dealings with solitaries, however, and notwithstanding the early printer Henry Pepwell’s description of her as ‘a deuoute ancres’, Margery Kempe never seems to have sought enclosure as an anchorite.3 But all of the other authors comprising the canon of the ‘Middle English Mystics’ were closely associated with the solitary vocations, either as practitioners themselves or in composing works for an anchoritic or eremitic audience. Julian of Norwich was of course an anchorite although, to judge from the details given in the Short 1

2 3

Book I, ch. 11 in Barry Windeatt, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004), lines 708–99 (pp. 86–90). All quotations from the Book will be taken from this edition and line numbers given. To facilitate reference to other editions, book and chapter numbers will also be given for these and other more general references to the Book. Further references to him are collected and discussed by Windeatt, ed. cit., notes to lines 528–30, pp. 73–4. See ibid., p. 434 (textual note to line 167), and p. 1.

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Text of her Revelations, not at the time when she had her visions.4 Richard Rolle seems already to have been in the Middle Ages England’s best-known hermit.5 In addition, his English epistle The Form of Living was written for the anchorite Margaret de Kirkby, enclosed at East Layton (North Yorkshire), and offered detailed guidance for many aspects of her material and spiritual existence.6 In 1435 his most popular Latin work, the Incendium Amoris, was translated into English as The Fire of Love by the Carmelite friar Richard Misyn for Margaret Heslyngton, anchorite at the church of St Margaret, York.7 The first book of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is addressed specifically to an anchoress, although it is clear that, almost from the first, Hilton envisaged the extension of the work’s readership to include the more general audience for whom Scale II is intended. His Latin epistle On the Image of Sin (De Imagine Peccati) is also addressed to a solitary, and from this (most likely his earliest extant work) and another early letter it is clear that Hilton himself spent some time living the solitary life between his leaving Cambridge and joining the Augustinian canons at Thurgarton.8 Although we know nothing certain of the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, his A Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings is designed as counsel for one struggling with a call to the solitary life, while the Cloud itself (and, by extension, The Book of Privy Counselling) is expressly directed to a disciple pursuing a ‘solitari forme & maner of leuyng’.9 Hermits and anchorites were, then, a feature of the spiritual landscape of late-medieval England as well as of its topography, and claim the attention of the student of the Middle English mystics as they did of a medieval pilgrim like Margery Kempe. This essay seeks first to present a sketch of the development of the solitary lives in medieval England – to answer, with in due course an 4

5

6

7

8 9

See Short Text, ch. ii (in E. Colledge and J. Walsh, eds, A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 35 (2 vols, Toronto, 1978), pp. 207–9), for the presence of others in Julian’s sickroom, and her anointing by the curate – neither of which would be usual for an anchorite, and ch. ix (ed. cit., p. 234) for the visit of her mother. Although Julian had her revelations in 1373, the first documentary reference to her as an anchorite does not occur until 1394. See Norman P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Studies and Texts 66 (Toronto, 1984), p. 200 n. 29. As witnessed, in their different ways, by the Officium prepared at Hampole in the hope of his canonisation (translated by Hope Emily Allen in Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle . . . and Materials for his Biography, Modern Language Association of America Monographs Series III (New York, 1927), pp. 55–61), by the words of caution expressed by the Cloud-author and Hilton, and by the defence of Rolle written by the hermit Thomas Basset. For a summary of these latter, see Michael Sargent, ‘Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle’, in Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, ed. James Hogg, 4 vols, Analecta Cartusiana lv (1981), i.160–205. Rolle also mentions, in his commentary Super Lectiones Mortuorum, his Libellus de Vita Heremitarum. This may be a lost work or, as Nicholas Watson suggests, Rolle may mean his Incendium Amoris. See Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge, 1991), p. 305 n. 21; for the quotation from Super Lectiones Mortuorum, see pp. 206–7. See The Fire of Love, and The Mending of Life or The Rule of Living, ed. Ralph Harvey, EETS OS 106 (London, 1896), p. 104. For Margaret Heslyngton see Angelo Raine, Mediaeval York: A topographical survey based on original sources (London, 1955), p. 108. See also the work being currently done on Misyn by Johan Bergstrom-Allen. See John P. H. Clark and Cheryl Taylor, trans, Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings, Analecta Cartusiana cxxiv (1987), i.69, 103–4. Phyllis Hodgson, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises (Exeter, 1982), p. 8, lines 15–16 (Cloud, ch. 1). Hodgson’s observation that the author ‘appears to live as a recluse’ (p. x) seems to me a considerable over-reading of the passage she cites in its support.

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emphasis on the anchoritic vocation that principally concerns us here, basic questions such as ‘what?’, ‘who?’, ‘where?’, ‘when?’ and ‘how?’ – before turning in its last part to perhaps the most insistent and intractable question for the modern observer: ‘why?’

Hermits in the Early Middle Ages When the desert ideal migrated to the West, would-be hermits were quick to find equivalents for the Eastern desert in the wildernesses of their own more temperate climate: forests, fens and the expanse of the ocean.10 The latter was particularly associated with Celtic Christianity, in which the eremitic component was strong, and is witnessed in the early practice of seeking ‘a desert in the ocean’, and subsequently in the large number of hermitages founded on islands off the west coast of Ireland.11 Celtic influence figures largely in the lives of early English hermits, who are also most commonly found at island sites.12 The Irishman St Aidan (d.651), apostle of Northumbria and first abbot and bishop of Lindisfarne, early Anglo-Saxon England’s greatest monastery, was accustomed to spend Lent living in seclusion as a hermit on the island of Inner Farne. His successor at Lindisfarne, St Cuthbert (c.634–87) lived the hermit-life on the island now known as St Cuthbert’s Isle, and later withdrew, as Aidan had done, to the Inner Farne. After his death he was succeeded as hermit there by Æthelwald, and at around the same time an ornate metal case was made for the Lindisfarne Gospels by the anchorite Billfrith. Cuthbert’s friend and contemporary (they died on the same day), St Herbert, lived on an inland island on Derwentwater (Cumbria). The Celtic brand of eremitic monasticism which was influential in early Northumbria was, however, gradually losing out during this period to the Benedictine model favoured by Rome. For St Benedict (c.480–c.550), eremitic withdrawal was no longer the first step towards the monastic life, but its culmination and extension, to be attempted only by those few who were sufficiently well qualified. He speaks of the anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against the devil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are

10 See the essay in this volume by Dyas, pp. 29–30. 11 Michael Herity, ‘Early Irish Hermitages in the Light of the Lives of Cuthbert’, in St Cuthbert, his Cult

and his Community to AD 1200, ed. Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 45–63. 12 For what follows here I have found useful Mary Clayton, ‘Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English prose saints’ lives and their contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, 1996), pp. 147–75. My thanks to Peter Jackson for this reference. Summaries of the lives of the saints I use here and later in the essay will be found, together with further bibliography, in David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints (Oxford, 1987).

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ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.13

This model was followed by St Guthlac (c.673–714), a successful soldier who at the age of twenty-four gave up his former life to enter the monastery of Repton (Derbyshire).14 After four years of communal life, Guthlac was inspired by the model of the Desert Fathers to seek out a desert of his own. Accordingly he made his way into the fens, ‘a very long tract, now consisting of marshes, now of bogs, sometimes of black waters overhung by fog, sometimes studded with wooded islands and traversed by the windings of tortuous streams’ (p. 87). Unsatisfied even by this desert place, Guthlac learned of a remote island deep within it, where ‘No settler had been able to dwell alone . . . on account of the phantoms of demons which haunted it’ (p. 89). And here, at Crowland (Lincolnshire), Guthlac resolved to live as a hermit. In addition to describing the fens repeatedly as heremum, or the desert, Guthlac’s biographer, the monk Felix, includes many reminiscences of earlier hermits’ lives, notably Bede’s life of St Cuthbert, and Athanasius’s of St Antony, in what follows. Episodes such as terrifying diabolical temptations, and the miraculous ministrations of wild birds and beasts, might have been drawn (and perhaps were drawn) from the experiences of Antony himself. By such strategies, Felix is able to establish his subject as a true heir to the desert tradition.

The New Hermits The model of Antony and the other Desert Fathers was also invoked by a new movement of monastic hermits in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but this time in order to challenge established Benedictine monasticism.15 The movement began with St Romuald (c.950–1027), a monk at the Cluniac Benedictine monastery of S. Apollinare-in-Classe, near Ravenna.16 His extensive study of the works of the Desert Fathers, combined with an exasperation that his fellow monks did not keep the Rule of St Benedict with the strictness he expected, persuaded him to reject the elaborate institutions and liturgical practices of the Cluniac observance and to seek greater solitude and ascesis as a hermit. For Romuald, however, the eremitic ideal was to inform not only his own ‘single combat of the desert’, but the reform of monasticism. He was joined by similarly minded companions who banded together into communities of hermits, which stressed the eremitic qualities of austerity, asceticism and withdrawal above total solitude. After his death, Romuald’s foundation at Camaldoli became the centre of a new order of hermit-monks (the still extant 13 Timothy Fry et al., eds, The Rule of St. Benedict (Collegeville, MN, 1981), ch. 1, lines 3–5, pp. 168–9. 14 The following two paragraphs are based on Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. Bertram Colgrave

(Cambridge, 1956). Page numbers to this edition will henceforth be given in the text. The memorable Old English poems on his life have been edited by Jane Roberts, The Guthlac Poems of the Exeter Book (Oxford, 1979). 15 This movement has been studied by Henrietta Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism (London, 1984), to which the rest of this section is extensively indebted. 16 For an outline of Romuald’s career, see ibid., pp. 29–32.

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Camaldolese). This process of hermit-inspired reform was reproduced throughout Europe, and was the origin of the great orders of high-medieval monasticism – the Cistercians, Premonstratensians and Carthusians – as well as many smaller, shorter-lived congregations. Similar narratives survive from England.17 In early 1132, a delegation of Cistercian monks from St Bernard’s monastery of Clairvaux passed through York on their way to Rievaulx Abbey. There they came to the attention of the monks of St Mary’s, the richest Benedictine abbey in the North of England. Their example prompted a number of the monks of St Mary’s to re-examine their own way of life, and to begin a campaign for reform of the house on stricter lines. After six months of dissension, the two parties met in the presence of Thurstan, archbishop of York. A riot ensued, and the reforming party of monks was expelled from St Mary’s. At the end of 1132, Thurstan established the monks on a suitably eremitic site, ‘fit rather to be the lair of wild beasts than the home of human beings’, near Ripon, which became Fountains Abbey, daughter house to Clairvaux, and one of the great Cistercian monasteries in England. This phase of eremitic history came to an end in 1215, when the Fourth Lateran Council placed a ban on the foundation of any new religious orders. Most of the orders created during the movement quite quickly lost their original eremitic character – victims of their own success in attracting recruits and donations. Few visitors to the remains of Fountains Abbey (National Trust) today would recognise in their scale and splendour either the inhospitable wilderness described by the early monks, or the humble austerity of the desert ideal. A sense of the latter may still, however, be had from the ruins of England’s best-preserved Carthusian monastery at Mount Grace (North Yorkshire, English Heritage and National Trust), where the restored and recreated cell conveys something of the quiet solitude of the Carthusian life. The Carthusians have a double claim on our interest. They are also our most valuable preservers and transmitters of the works of the medieval mystics.18

Anchorites As we have seen, St Benedict uses the terms ‘hermit’ and ‘anchorite’ synonymously, and this usage is general in the West until around the end of the first millennium. Thereafter a process begins in which the two terms are applied more or less unambiguously to two increasingly clearly demarcated forms of the solitary life. ‘Hermit’ continues to be used of one who retires to the ‘desert’ 17 For the story retold here, see L. G. D. Baker, ‘The Foundation of Fountains Abbey’, Northern History

iv (1969), pp. 29–43. For context, see Janet Burton, Monastic and Religious Orders in Britain 1000–1300 (Cambridge, 1994), ch. 4. 18 For this aspect of Carthusian activity, see M. G. Sargent, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History xxvii (1976), pp. 225–40, and 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’, in Hogg, Kartäusermystik und -mystiker, ii. 109–20.

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or equivalent wilderness. ‘Anchorite’, on the other hand, begins to refer more specifically to one who is strictly enclosed (effectively incarcerated) in a ‘cell’ or ‘anchorhold’, often, though not always, adjoining a church, intending, by being shut off from the world, to be more open to God.19 Just as the early medieval hermits sought in the waste-places of the West an equivalent for the Eastern desert, so anchorites found a place of solitude and withdrawal in the inner landscape of the psyche: for the anchorite, we might say, the desert was a state of mind. Although the life of strict enclosure may be encountered before this period (and indeed is present from the beginnings of the desert tradition, in the person of Thais), we should not be surprised that it is the twelfth century, with its renewed interest in interiority and psychology, that sees this form of the solitary life attaining a distinctive character and widespread distribution.20 In England, the anchoritic life remained popular throughout the Middle Ages, among both men and women. An indication of this continued popularity may be obtained from the accompanying table of anchorites and sites, distributed by century and gender, compiled by Ann K. Warren, and based on the data collected by R. M. Clay:21 Century

12th 13th 14th 15th 16th–1539

Sex Female

Male

Indeterminate

48 123 96 110 37

30 37 41 66 27

18 38 77 28 4

Total

Sites

96 198 214 204 68

77 175 171 129 49

It will be seen that the period of most rapid growth in the vocation was the thirteenth century (which is also, we recall, the period of Ancrene Wisse’s composition), and that thereafter numbers remained remarkably consistent at around two hundred known anchorites per completed century. We may also note that, in each century, there appear to have been more women than men pursuing the vocation, perhaps because bodily enclosure was considered particularly appropriate for women (whom medieval culture associated so closely with the body and its appetites), but also perhaps because the range of religious careers available to women was so much more restricted than that enjoyed by men.22 In 19 See my ‘Langland and Hermits’, Yearbook of Langland Studies xi (1997), pp. 67–86, at pp. 71–2. 20 For Thais, see the essay in this volume by Dyas, p. 28. 21 Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley, 1985), p. 20; see also

Rotha Mary Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, 1914). Clay’s data were collected almost a century ago but, while her analysis of it now seems somewhat old-fashioned, her catalogue of sites and solitaries has yet to be superseded. I am currently completing the task, begun by Clay and continued by Basil Cottle, of bringing Hermits and Anchorites up to date. 22 The latter point is made by Patricia J. F. Rozof, ‘The Anchoress in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Medieval Religious Women, Volume Two: Peaceweavers, ed. Lillian Thomas Shank and John A. Nichols, Cistercian Studies 72 (Kalamazoo, 1987), pp. 123–44. For a consideration of women’s choice of the anchoritic life in the context of medieval constructions of femininity, see Elizabeth Robertson, Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience (Knoxville, 1990),

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most of the documents on which we rely for our information about them, male and female anchorites are both referred to by the Latin term anachorita – modern English ‘anchorite’ – regardless of gender (this is the principal explanation for the large number of solitaries in the ‘indeterminate’ category of Warren’s table). The Latin words inclusus (masc.) and inclusa (fem.) did distinguish gender, as did the less common reclusus/reclusa . The Middle English word for anchorite is ancre or anker; this term is usually reserved for male anchorites, while women are known by the term ancress or ankeresse.23 The modern use of ‘anchorite’ for males and ‘anchoress’ for females, while convenient, is not therefore, strictly speaking, historically correct.24 What sort of people became anchorites, and where were they enclosed? These questions were addressed in the first half of the fifteenth century by the canon lawyer William Lyndwood.25 His discussion of them, though comparatively late, draws on earlier legislative material, and many parallels may be drawn between his recommendations and the practice recorded for the earlier centuries. No one, according to Lyndwood, could become an anchorite without the approval of the bishop and, before the latter gave his assent, he was to consider carefully the place of proposed enclosure, the character and status of the candidate, and how, once enclosed, he or she would be supported. Lyndwood then expands upon each of these considerations in turn. Under place of enclosure, he notes: The diocesan [bishop] must consider whether the place where someone wants to be enclosed is close to or remote from a church, and also if it 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. It should also be considered whether the spot is near some monastery out of whose charity such an enclosed person may be supported, or far from one.

The preference here expressed for an urban location is perhaps surprising, given the solitary vocations’ origins and early history, but it is borne out by the surviving records. Warren’s analysis of her data revealed a trend away from rural to urban sites over the course of the medieval period, until in the sixteenth

esp. chs 2–3. Much of the work on the vocation over the last two decades has been concerned with issues of gender (which, until recently, has meant predominantly femininity). For current scholarship in this area, see Liz Herbert McAvoy and Mari Hughes-Edwards, eds, Intersections of Gender and Enclosure: Anchorites, Wombs and Tombs (forthcoming, Cardiff, 2005). 23 Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn and John Reidy (Ann Arbor, 1952–2001), svv. ancre, ankeresse. Both definitions are in some respects unsatisfactory, and should be used with caution. 24 It may also be considered politically objectionable; as in similar occupational terms – e.g., ‘authoress’ – the suffix can be felt to mark the female as a derogation from the (male) norm. 25 Provinciale (seu Constitutiones Angliae) (Oxford, 1679), iii.20.2, at pp. 214–15. Throughout his commentary (and in spite of the ratios of women to men noted above) Lyndwood uses the generic masculine, though his text – a supposed decree of Archbishop Edmund of Abingdon – refers to both male and female anchorites.

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century the majority of anchorites lived in towns.26 Of the forty-five cells identified by Clay in the county of Yorkshire, ten were in York itself. A further four were in Beverley, three in Richmond, two in Pontefract and one in Wakefield.27 Julian seems to have been part of a renaissance in the solitary life in latemedieval Norwich, for which Clay found more hermits and anchorites than for any other English town (including London). Between 1370 and 1549 there were anchorites at the Carmelite, Dominican and Franciscan friaries, at the College of St Mary in the Fields (where Margery Kempe visited), and at Carrow Nunnery; and also at the parish churches of St Edward, St Etheldreda, St Giles, St Julian (a sequence beginning with Julian herself), St Peter and St Stephen.28 Parish churches were, however, not the only monuments of civic achievement to be dignified (and perhaps sanctified) by the presence of a solitary. London had cells for anchorites at Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Temple Bar and at Allhallows in the city walls; there was a hermit at Aldgate, and an anchorite in the Tower.29 The surviving architectural evidence (which is scant) and occasional documentary and literary allusions suggest that (if there was such a thing) the typical anchorite’s cell was constructed as a lean-to against the wall of a parish church, often on the colder and darker north side, and more often abutting the nave (the part of the church that was the preserve of the laity) than the chancel (which was the priest’s).30 It might consist of one or two small rooms. The door would be locked (or even blocked up); instead there would be a small opening through which food could be passed in and waste passed out, and a narrow window or squint pierced in the church wall through which the anchorite could observe the celebration of mass. In 1357 Margaret de Kirkby (the disciple for whom Rolle had written his Form of Living) was allowed to move from her cell at East Layton to Ainderby Steeple, so that ‘she may see and hear the solemn sacrament of the Lord’s altar, which in her present place of enclosure she is unable to do’.31 The narrow squint in the surviving anchorite’s house at Chester-le-Street (County Durham) is so arranged that through it the anchorite could see the central part of a side altar in the south aisle of the church, and very little else. Lyndwood went on to consideration of the persons applying to be enclosed. The bishop was to take into account whether they were ‘religious or secular, clerical or lay, man or woman, previously experienced in austerity of living or not, young or old’. This list gives a good idea of the wide range of people who might seek to take on the life, and many examples could be given from the records of anchorites from each of these categories. The bishop was further to satisfy himself of the moral character and stability of the postulant, and whether he had reached the perfection of active life, ‘for anyone less developed or other-

26 Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons , p. 37. It should be remembered that medieval towns are in

general better documented than rural areas. Clay, Hermits and Anchorites, pp. 254–61. Tanner, Church in Late Medieval Norwich, pp. 198–201. Clay, Hermits and Anchorites, pp. 228–31. See Roberta Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action: The other monasticism, The Archaeology of Medieval Britain (Leicester, 1995), ch. 5, and esp. pp. 183–93. 31 Clay, Hermits and Anchorites, pp. 142–3. 27 28 29 30

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wise incapable of the perfection of the active life will not easily bring profit to himself or to others in the contemplative life’. Lyndwood spent longest on the question of the anchorite’s means of support – perhaps not surprisingly, since according to canon law the bishop himself became liable for any anchorite in his diocese who, by accident or inadequate endowment, was left without any other provision. Anchorites (and hermits as well) were allowed to own property, but, warns Lyndwood, ‘if on the other hand they do not have enough of their own to live on adequately, they should not lightly be enclosed’, unless they are members of a religious order and entitled to a share of its goods held in common. They should certainly not expect to rely on begging. These were real concerns. Once enclosed, anchorites were entirely dependent on the outside world, both for finding their food and other necessities, and for getting the same to them. Not every anchorite could be as fortunate as the anchoress of Leicester who, the chronicler Matthew Paris tells us, died in 1225 having taken no food but the sacrament for the past seven years, and who was nevertheless always healthy, ‘with a complexion of lilies and roses, typifying her modesty and pure virginity’.32 In 1353, an anchoress formerly enclosed at Hathern in the same county had been forced to leave her cell ‘for default of the necessaries of life’, and was granted permission from her bishop to choose another one.33 The most reliable of patrons was, naturally enough, the Crown, and among the most enthusiastic royal supporters of anchorites was Henry III. Even his protégés could, however, be vulnerable. The anchoress of Wootton (Oxfordshire) must have suffered considerable hardship in 1263–4, when the quarter of wheat with which Henry had been accustomed to provide her every year since 1252 fell a year in arrears.34 And at Henry’s death in 1272 Geoffrey le Hermit, recluse of the Tower of London, petitioned the new king Edward I for continuation of a grant for his sustenance; but no such grant is recorded, and no further anchorites.35 Ann Warren’s study of Anchorites and their Patrons nevertheless shows that financial and practical support of this kind was readily forthcoming, and in all but a very few cases amply so, from every level of society. Once the candidate had been approved, enclosure could follow, in a ceremony that varied from diocese to diocese. Among the most impressive and dramatic services for the enclosing of anchorites is that used in the fifteenth century by the bishop of Exeter.36 At the climax of the service, the bishop leads the one to be enclosed by the hand to the anchorhold where, after a sequence of prayers, the bishop says to him, ‘If you want to go in, go in.’ Once he has done 32 H. R. Luard, ed., Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albani, Chronica Majora , Rolls Series (7

vols, London, 1872–83), iii.101. 33 Lincolnshire Archives Office, Episcopal Register IX (Register of Bishop John Gynwell), fol. 44r. 34 E. A. Jones, ‘The Hermits and Anchorites of Oxfordshire’, Oxoniensia lxiii (1998), pp. 51–77, at pp.

56, 75 (n. 36). 35 Public Record Office, SC1 (Ancient Correspondence): SC1/30, no. 87. 36 Ralph Barnes, ed., Liber Pontificalis of Edmund Lacy, Bishop of Exeter: A manuscript of the four-

teenth century; printed from the original, in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter (Exeter, 1847), pp. 131–7. As with Lyndwood’s legal text (above, n. 24), although the ceremony states at its outset that it may be adapted for the enclosure of clerics, laymen or women, it is thereafter written with a male anchorite in mind.

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so, he and his anchorhold are blessed with incense and holy water; the bishop anoints him with extreme unction and, while he lies prostrate, recites over him the Commendatio Anime from the Office of the Dead. Then the bishop shows him his grave, which he enters, singing ‘Here shall be my repose for ever and ever.’ The bishop sprinkles him with a little dust and, having given some final exhortations, leaves. The door to the anchorhold is then blocked up and, after a psalm and some concluding prayers, the congregation leaves quietly. Liturgy is corroborated by other evidence. Ancrene Wisse recommends that anchoresses should ‘each day scrape up the earth of their graves, in which they will rot’.37 Skeletons have indeed been discovered in the foundations of a number of those cells which have been excavated, including one at the church of St Anne, Lewes (Sussex), where the squint is so positioned that, in order to be able to see the altar, the thirteenth-century anchorite would have had to kneel in her own grave.38 Alongside the imagery of death is that of incarceration and pain: this from the life of the twelfth-century Christina of Markyate, who spent more than four years sitting on a stone in a room ‘not bigger than a span and a half ’: O what trials she had to bear of cold and heat, hunger and thirst, daily fasting! The confined space would not allow her to wear even the necessary clothing when she was cold. The airless little enclosure became stifling when she was hot. Through long fasting, her bowels became contracted and dried up. There was a time when her burning thirst caused little clots of blood to bubble up from her nostrils. But what was more unbearable than all this was that she could not go out until the evening to satisfy the demands of nature. Even when she was in dire need, she could not open the door for herself . . . So it was necessary for her to sit quite still in the place, to suffer torments, and to keep quiet.39

We might suspect a degree of hagiographic licence in this instance, but an anchorhold at Compton (Surrey) has a ground plan measuring only 2.04 x 1.31m – the dimensions perhaps of a moderat ely sized lift.40 But it is easy to play up the grand guignol aspects of the anchoritic vocation. It is true that some cells were very cramped. A more normal size seems to have been rather more comfortable, at between 2.4 and 3.0m square, often with accommodation disposed on two storeys. The anchorhold attached to Chichester cathedral measured a spacious 8.7 x 7.2m.41 Although the liturgy suggests that the anchorite was walled up, the blocking of the door seems, from the implications of other records, to have been in many cases a symbolic gesture only.42 The anchorhold attached to the monastery at Sheen (Surrey) had a garden added to it some time after its foundation in 1417; in 1256 Juliana, 37 Hugh White, trans., Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses (Harmondsworth, 1993), pp. 58–9. 38 Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action, pp. 190–2. 39 C. H. Talbot, ed., The Life of Christina of Markyate, a Twelfth Century Recluse (Oxford, 1959), pp.

103–5. 40 Gilchrist, Contemplation and Action, p. 187. 41 Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons , p. 32. 42 Ibid., p. 98 n. 15.

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anchorite at St Nicholas’s Worcester, was permitted to widen the courtyard attached to her cell by up to seven feet in each direction; and in 1401 Emma Scherman, after many years’ enclosure at Pontefract (West Yorkshire) in a cell ‘with a little garden contiguous thereto for the sake of taking fresh air’, was granted permission on account of the tumults and clamours of the people in the said place, to transfer herself to a more suitable place, to have there another cell with a like garden, and to leave her cell yearly for the purpose of visiting churches and other pious places. 43

Anchorites routinely had servants, as Margery Kempe’s confessor did, and on occasion enjoyed the additional society of another anchorite (or two, as the sisters for whom Ancrene Wisse was composed).44 Ancrene Wisse also allows a cat, and – if it is ‘of necessity’ – a cow. In his De Institutione Inclusarum Aelred has to warn his sister against becoming more like a housewife than an anchorite, seeking pasture and herdsmen for her beasts, and worrying about yields, prices and numbers.45 The author of the early fifteenth-century Speculum Inclusorum goes so far as to criticise those people who choose the anchoritic life, so that they might receive out of the devotion of faithful Christians what they can live on or spend in more abundance than they would probably have had in another kind of living, and so that in vigils, fasts, prayers and other occupations they might dispose themselves according to their will, fleeing, out of a certain voluptuous slothfulness, as far as possible, the yoke of obedience and bodily labours and the difficulties of this life.

These false anchorites, he claims, ‘in almost all things enjoy a more pleasurable way of life than truly they would have been able to do in the secular estate’.46

Hermits in the Later Middle Ages At around the same time as the development of the vocation of anchorite – and perhaps as a corollary of that development – the life of the hermit was becoming a less spiritually exalted one.47 From about the beginning of the fourteenth century, we begin to encounter hermits whose principal occupation appears to be not solitary ascesis, but public good works. In 1330 Adam de Whenby, hermit of the chapel of St Helen at Shipton (in Overton, North Yorkshire), was 43 Ibid., p. 50; Calendar of the Patent Rolls . . . A.D. 1247–1258 (London, 1908), p. 492, noted Clay,

Hermits and Anchorites, p. 8; Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons , p. 78. 44 Book of Margery Kempe, I.15; line 1039. 45 De Institutione Inclusarum, ed. C. H. Talbot, in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia, Corpus

Christianorum Continuatio mediaeualis 1 (Turnholt, 1971), pp. 635–82, at p. 639. 46 L. Oliger, ed., Speculum Inclusorum Auctore Anonymo Anglico Saeculi XIV, Lateranum n. s. iv/i

(Rome, 1938), Part I, ch. ii (p. 68). There is also a fragmentary Middle English translation. See Marta Powell Harley, ed., The Myrour of Recluses: A Middle English Translation of Speculum Inclusorum (Madison, 1995). For this passage, see p. 4. 47 For hermits of this period, Clay’s Hermits and Anchorites remains the principal source. I am working on a book-length study. For a preliminary statement, see my ‘Langland and Hermits’.

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granted royal protection and safe conduct ‘while seeking means of carriage and alms to enable him to make a safe way in the forest of Galtres at a place called les Polles, where many accidents have occurred by reason of the depth of the ways’.48 Most hermits of this period were, like Adam, menders of roads, maintainers of bridges and lighthouse-keepers.49 It is perhaps not necessary to look much further than this context in order to explain Richard Rolle’s oft-remarked touchiness concerning his own eremitic vocation.50 By the fifteenth century, steps had been taken to regulate the vocation. Some rudimentary ‘rules’ (or – as with Ancrene Wisse – more properly ‘works of guidance’) were written, and hermits were obliged to make a vow before their bishop.51 One example can stand for many similar. On 9 October 1452, Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, immediately before celebrating mass in his chapel in the manor of Woky, ratified and approved the following profession made by a certain John of Wellis, an unmarried man, who desired to lead a hermit’s life, serving his Creator in perpetual chastity, to wit: ‘I, John of Wellis, not wedded, promytte and avowe to God and Our Lady Seynt Mary and to al the Seyntes of Hevyne the ful purpose of perpetual chastite after the rule of Seynt Poule the heremite, in presence of yow, ryght reverent fader in God Thomas, by the grace of God bisship of Bathe and of Wellis. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, Amen. ’ He deliv-

ered to the bishop the schedule whereon the above protestation was written, marked with the sign of the cross, because he could not write, and thereupon the bishop, after completion of the solemnities requisite in such cases, with his own hands invested him with a habit suitable to the estate of hermit.52 Even though we are here, with the illiterate labourer John of Wells, a long way from the intellectual achievements of (say) the late-medieval Carthusians, or the rarefied world of contemplation and prayer inhabited by anchorites, we may still see, in John’s vow to live according to the rule of St Paul the First Hermit, the enduring importance and power of the desert tradition. We turn finally to the questions that are most often prompted by extreme forms of asceticism of the sort we have been considering. Why did people choose this life? And why were they both encouraged in their purpose by friends, relatives and even spouses,53 and honoured and rewarded for their choice by the rest of society? 48 Calendar of the Patent Rolls . . . A.D. 1330–1334 (London, 1893), p. 1. 49 For whom, see Clay, Hermits and Anchorites, chs 4–5. 50 This is a point to which I shall return in my forthcoming study. Rolle’s ‘defensiveness’ and ‘self-justi-

ficatory’ tendencies are treated by Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, esp. pp. 43–52. 51 See V. Davis, ‘The Rule of St Paul, the First Hermit, in Late Medieval England’, Studies in Church History xxii (1985), pp. 203–14. 52 H. C. Maxwell-Lyte and M. C. B. Dawes, eds, The Register of Thomas Bekynton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1443–1465, 2 vols, Somerset Record Society 49–50 (1934–5), I.190. 53 On 2 May 1479, Henry Andrew made his vow to follow the hermit life henceforth. On the same occasion, his wife Alice made a vow of perpetual chastity. See Testamenta Eboracensia: a selection of wills from the Registry at York, vol. III, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society xlv (1864) pp. 343–4.

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The first question occupies Part One of the Speculum Inclusorum, a work of guidance for male anchorites.54 The author gives four reasons why people choose the life of an anchorite. We have already encountered his somewhat surprising first reason: ‘the opportunity of living according to one’s pleasure without hard work’ (p. 66, lines 18–19). Needless to say this is not a motive that he condones (it ‘applies to wrathful and slothful people’ (p. 67, lines 25–6)). Others become anchorites with more praiseworthy intentions. Some are prompted by ‘a fervent desire to do penance for their sins for the whole term of this life’ (pp. 71–2, lines 162–3); others wish to avoid the opportunities or occasions for sin, by the strict discipline and denial of their bodily senses. But the author keeps his unreserved approval for those anchorites who are drawn to the life by the ‘desire more freely to have leisure for the contemplation and praises of God’ (p. 81, lines 453–4). In the anchorhold, they will be able fully, fervently and devoutly to contemplate God, and to give him heartfelt thanks for all his gifts. And so it is no wonder if above all they desire to avoid worldly anxieties. For this good emptiness, this holy idleness, this profitable rest is generally wont to be hindered by mental anxiety, by occupation of the senses, and by bodily labour in the cares of this world. For experience teaches that mental anxiety about worldly things hinders the fruit of the contemplative life (p. 81, lines 460–71).

All very well for them, we might respond, but the idleness of contemplation can begin to sound rather like self-indulgence. The relation of the ascetic to the rest of society certainly seems to have been a problem in the early Church, with some reservations expressed about the apparent selfishness of the spiritual athlete’s dedication to his own salvation.55 By the Middle Ages, however, there was a well-established and comprehensive theory of the relation of the ascetic to the rest of Christian society, of the contemplative life to the active, of Rachel to Leah and Mary to Martha. The story of Christ’s visit to the two sisters, Martha, who was ‘careful and troubled about many things’, and Mary, who chose the better part (Luke 10: 38–42), had been interpreted as early as Origen (c.185–254) as an allegory of the two lives.56 Aelred retells the story in De Institutione Inclusarum, setting out the responsibilities of the two lives figured by the two sisters: almsgiving is the business of those ‘which han worldly godes 54 This interesting text remains under-studied. See my ‘A New Look into the Speculum Inclusorum’, The

Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland and Wales , ed. M. Glasscoe, Exeter Symposium VI, (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 123–45; Mari Hughes-Edwards, ‘Hedgehog Skins and Hairshirts: The changing role of asceticism in the anchoritic ideal’, Mystics Quarterly xxviii (2002), pp. 6–25, and Liz Herbert McAvoy, ‘ “Neb . . . sumdeal ilich wummon & neddre is behinden”: Reading the Monstrous in the Anchoritic Text’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. E. A. Jones, Exeter Symposium VII (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 51–67, at pp. 59–63. I am working on a new edition of the Latin Speculum. Quotations in this paragraph are my own translation, and references are given to page number in Oliger’s edition, and line number in the Middle English translation edited by Harley. For editions, see above n. 46. 55 See, for example, Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, The Penguin History of the Church 1 (rev. edn, Harmondsworth, 1993), pp. 176–9. 56 See Giles Constable, ‘The Interpretation of Mary and Martha’, Three Studies in Medieval Religious and Social Thought (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–141.

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or holy chirche godes to dispende’ – that is, those who live the active life of Martha; but cloistered contemplatives – and pre-eminently anchorites – ‘han not to do with this, but þei shulden norisshe her affeccions with blessed idelnes and feden her soule with gostly delytes’.57 Each life is good, though Mary chose the better part. The two women are sisters and live together; just so, the two lives are inextricably bound up with each other. Those in active life perform the works of charity, and give to good causes – including anchorites – while the contemplatives suffer and pray enough both for themselves and for those whose commitment to the active life (of marriage, preaching or secular governance) restricts their own ability to carry out their spiritual duties and desires. This symbiotic relationship is sometimes made explicit in our sources – for example, when Beatrice Roos left 6s 8d to the priest-anchorite in Bishopsgate (London) to pray for her soul – but it is implicit throughout and underpins the relationships detailed in Warren’s study of Anchorites and their Patrons.58 So the devotions of the solitary can be of benefit to secular society, but how do they fit in with the work of the Church? The Liber de Dominus vobiscum (Book of ‘The Lord be with you’) of St Peter Damian (1007–1072) was written in response to just this question, posed by the recluses who were attached to Peter’s monastery of Fonte Avellana.59 How, they wanted to know, could they, as solitaries, say mass in their cells? How could they say ‘The Lord be with you’ when there was no one there to say it to? And was it permissible for them to give the responses to the mass themselves, since there was no congregation present? These were urgent questions for men whose ordination as priests had made the saying of mass central to their identity. Peter’s answer is essentially twofold. First, it is not permissible to depart from the forms ordained by Holy Church. His second (and more interesting) argument proceeds from the doctrine of the mystical body of Christ: that the celebration of mass is an act of communion, not simply with anyone who happens to be with the celebrant at the time, but with the whole of the Church. As Peter concludes: Therefore let no brother who lives alone in a cell be afraid to utter the words which are common to the whole Church; for although he is separated in space from the congregation of the faithful yet he is bound together with them all by love in the unity of faith; although they are absent in the flesh, they are near at hand in the mystical unity of the Church.60

Even from a purely secular point of view it is not necessary for us to view hermits and anchorites as having totally ‘opted out’ of society, while giving

57 Quotations are taken from the Middle English translation in Bodleian Library Oxford, MS Bodley

423: John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, eds, Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum: Two English Translations, EETS OS 287 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 16–17. The English here is pithier than the Latin, for which see De Institutione, ed. Talbot, pp. 660–1. 58 For this example, see p. 198. 59 Translated in St. Peter Damian: Selected Writings on the Spiritual Life , trans. Patricia McNulty (London, 1959), pp. 53–81. 60 Ibid., p. 74.

HERMITS AND ANCHORITES IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT

17

nothing back. If we read against the grain of their cautions against anchoritic gossiping, we could argue that Aelred and Ancrene Wisse provide evidence that the anchorhold, every bit as much as the mill, smithy and market, was at the hub of the local community.61 We should note that anchorites hardly ever appear as an imposition on a community from outside; the situation of cells, abutting the naves of parish churches or town walls, and the testamentary and eleemosynary support forthcoming from all levels of society, offer ample evidence for local communities’ investment (financial and ideological) in the people whom, the evidence suggests, they regarded as ‘their’ anchorites. Hermits and anchorites were also liminal figures, positioned on the physical and symbolic margins of communities, and as such could exercise vital functions (such as the resolution of disputes) that could not be successfully performed either by complete outsiders or by those enmeshed in the many networks of relationships within a society. This argument from anthropology was applied by Peter Brown to the age of the Desert Fathers, in which the ‘Holy Man’ can be seen to have operated as a ‘hinge-man’ for the wider community around him.62 The approach is of benefit for study of the English Middle Ages too. Henry Mayr-Harting showed how the twelfth-century anchorite St Wulfric of Haselbury (Somerset) was able to serve his village community from his cell as arbitrator, healer, agent for poor relief, perhaps even as banker, and as a link between the worlds of the villagers and of their new Norman overlord.63 Solitaries also belonged to other communities, which must often have intersected with the local community in complex ways. Most important would have been the relationship with the confessor, though it is not a relationship modern scholarship has generally been able to recover, except inasmuch as it may be recorded by some of our mystical and anchoritic texts. The anchorite, in particular, might have responsibility for a small household. And then there are the further communities (which might include textual communities) of other solitaries. We think first, perhaps, of the three anchoresses for whom Ancrene Wisse was composed, and also the community of readers (perhaps initially the same readers) for (or by) whom the Katherine and Wooing Groups of meditational texts were composed.64 We think of Christina of Markyate’s flight from an unwanted marriage, and the eremitic underground movement that came to her aid, to conceal her and further her desire to live a virginal life. At a more humdrum level, we find Geoffrey de Bolton, hermit, who was in 1328 responsible for mending the road outside the anchorites’ house near Doncaster.65 And,

61 See Ancrene Wisse, trans. White, p. 46. For Aelred on gossip, see De Institutione, ed. Talbot, p. 638.

62 63 64 65

Some of the work of reclaiming such ‘gossip’ has been done by Felicity Riddy, ‘ “Women talking about the things of God”: a late medieval sub-culture’, Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 , ed. Carol Meale (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 104–27. ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Roman Studies lxi (1971), pp. 80–101. ‘Functions of a Twelfth-Century Recluse’, History lx (1975), pp. 337–52. See Susannah Mary Chewning, ‘Mysticism and the Anchoritic Community: “A Time of Veiled Infinity” ’, in Medieval Women in their Communities, ed. Diane Watt (Cardiff, 1997), pp. 116–37. Calendar of the Patent Rolls . . . A.D. 1327–1330 (London, 1893), p. 315. Note the plural ‘anchorites’ and its evidence for a further community of anchorites.

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finally, there must have been many encounters with like-minded, or simply curious, individuals who, like Margery Kempe, came seeking ‘holy dalyawns’. This book is both evidence and, it is to be hoped, stimulus for the continuation of such encounters.

THE WILDERNESS AND MEDIEVAL ANCHORITIC SPIRITUALITY

2 ‘Wildernesse is Anlich lif of Ancre Wununge’: The Wilderness and Medieval Anchoritic Spirituality DEE DYAS

Wildernesse is anlich lif of ancre wununge . . . Bi þis wildernesse wende ure lauerdes folc, as Exode teleð, toward te eadi lond of Ierusalem . . . Ant
e, mine leoue sustren, wendeð bi þe ilke wei toward te hehe Ierusalem . . . Gað þah ful warliche, for i þis wildernesse beoð uuele beastes moni: liun of prude, neddre of attri onde, vnicorne of wreaððe, beore of dead slawðe, vox of
isceunge, suhe of
iuernesse, scorpiun wið þe teil of stinginde leccherie. (Ancrene Wisse Part 4)1 (The wilderness is the solitary life of the anchoress’ dwelling . . . Through this wilderness our Lord’s people went, as the book of Exodus tells, toward the blessed land of Jerusalem . . . And you, my dear sisters, go by the same way toward the high Jerusalem . . . But go very warily, for in this wilderness are many harmful beasts: the lion of pride; the serpent of poisonous envy; the unicorn of anger; the bear of deadly sloth; the fox of covetousness; the sow of gluttony; the scorpion with the tail of stinging lechery.)2

Introduction In her survey of anchorites and their patrons in medieval England, Ann Warren asserts that medieval anchorites, even when enclosed alongside parish churches, were regarded as having ‘escaped into the wilderness, [their] life a symbol of the desert ideal’.3 And, as the epigraph to this essay demonstrates, the author of the Ancrene Wisse does indeed equate the wilderness with the solitary life of the anchoress’ dwelling: ‘Wildernesse is anlich lif of ancre wununge.’ This seems to offer a straightforward enough formula: wilderness equals anchoritic life. There is, however, nothing simple or fixed about either element in this 1

2 3

J. R. R. Tolkien, ed., Ancrene Wisse, Edited from Ms. Corpus Christi College Cambridge 402 , EETS OS 249 (London, 1962), p. 101. In this essay, Tolkien’s edition is used for quotations from Ancrene Wisse, though contracted manuscript forms are silently expanded, and other features of the text than spelling silently modernised. Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, trans and intro., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works , The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York & Mahwah, NJ, 1991), pp. 119–20. Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley, 1985), p. 5.

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equation. The wilderness in Judaeo-Christian thought is an immensely rich, complex, and constantly shifting image. It is interpreted and reinterpreted within the Bible and subsequently by the Christian Church, interacting with the spirituality of successive generations to produce subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, nuanced differences in the focus of the anchoritic calling. Medieval anchoritic spirituality in its turn looks back not only to the Bible but to those earlier interpretations, its emphases and variations the product of a three-way interaction between the biblical motif of the wilderness, the models provided by the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and the contemporary spiritual context from which medieval anchorites and their instructors came. It is not simply a case of anchoritic practice being shaped by an accepted wilderness model. There is ongoing selection and evolution as individuals and groups in different contexts work with the multifaceted concept of the wilderness. In this study I propose to offer a brief overview of the multifaceted nature of the wilderness motif in the Bible, and to examine some of the ways in which it is subsequently interpreted, developed and embodied in anchoritic theory and practice.

The Meanings of the Wilderness in the Bible The terms ‘wilderness’ and ‘desert’ are largely interchangeable, since both are used to convey the meanings of the Hebrew midbar and the Greek éremos.4 On these two geographical terms the biblical writers construct an astonishing variety of theological interpretations in constant dialogue, and tension, with one another. Over half the Old Testament uses of midbar have not only spatial but temporal dimensions,5 many referring specifically to the forty years of wilderness wanderings between the Israelites’ escape from Egypt and their conquest of Canaan. Wilderness is in this sense an ‘in-between’ time, but it is not just about marking time, for within the Exodus event many other themes lie embedded. Moreover, the intertextuality of the Old Testament, together with the further layers of interpretation and development added by New Testament writers, produces an ongoing interaction between the multiple meanings that emerge. The idea of the wilderness in the Bible is a kaleidoscopic image; shake it and the shapes combine to make a slightly different pattern each time. What then are these shapes, these subsidiary motifs? Exile All discussions of the role of the wilderness must acknowledge the powerful strand within Christian tradition that portrays human beings as wanderers in the wilderness of this world, all sharing in the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the garden of Eden, the place of delight and of closeness to God. 4

5

‘The LXX (Septuagint) (as also the NT) renders midbâr 244 times with éremos, so that these words can be considered strict equivalents’, G. Johannes Botterweck, Helmer Ringgren and Heinz-Josef Fabry, eds, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids & Cambridge, 1997), p. 92. Ibid., p. 104.

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21

emisit eum Dominus Deus de paradiso voluptatis . . . eiecitque Adam et conlocavit ante paradisum voluptatis cherubin et flammeum gladium atque versatilem ad custodiendam viam ligni vitae (And the Lord God sent him out of the Paradise of pleasure . . . And he cast out Adam; and placed before the paradise of pleasure Cherubims, and a flaming sword, turning every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.) (Genesis 3: 23–4)6

Spiritual alienation from God is mirrored by the alien and unresponsive physical environment that now confronts humankind: ‘maledicta terra in opere tuo . . . spinas et tribulos germinabit tibi’ (Cursed is the earth in thy work . . . Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee) (Genesis 3: 17–18). There can be no return to Eden. There is, however, within the biblical narrative, the possibility of reaching another homeland, a hope offered to those who are willing to return to God and journey obediently through such alien landscapes. All wilderness experience therefore carries within it a fundamental sense of alienation and deprivation, of struggle for survival, of being on a dangerous spiritual knife-edge poised between the horror of eternal condemnation and the hope of redemption. Temptation and sin Disobedience brought humankind into the wilderness in the first place and the literal wilderness, like the wilderness of the world, remained a place where temptation and the possibility of sin were real. Almost all those who entered the desert during the Exodus from Egypt died there. They had sufficient faith to embark upon the journey but not enough to stay the course. They rebelled, they fell into idolatry and immorality, they grumbled, they sinned – and so they perished (Numbers 14: 33, 1 Corinthians 10: 1–10). The shadow of that failure, the warning that such blessing might end in condemnation, covered all who subsequently sought the desert. ‘Remember’, says the Deuteronomist, ‘all the way through which the Lord thy God hath brought thee for forty years through the desert [per desertum], to afflict thee and to prove thee: and that the things that were known in thy heart might be made known, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no’ (Deuteronomy 8: 2). One of the most dangerous temptations in the desert was to look back, to long for past comforts, however illusory. The Israelites, weary of their wilderness journey, voiced an ill-founded nostalgia for the imagined comforts of Egypt. For this grumbling and the lack of trust and commitment it represented, they forfeited their place in the Promised Land and the wilderness became their grave.

6

Quotations from the biblical text are taken from the Latin Vulgate (Robert Weber, ed. 1983. Biblia Sacra Vulgata. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft) and the Douay version (The Holy Bible: Douay Version. Translated from the Latin Vulgate. Douay A.D. 1609: Rheims A.D. 1582. London: Catholic Truth Society, 1955).

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Danger and conf lict Nor was it only the intrinsic weakness of human nature that was to be feared. ‘Biblical human beings, accustomed to village and town life, view the wilderness as a gaping void . . . The “great and terrible wilderness” . . . inspires revulsion and debilitating fear’ (Deuteronomy 1: 19; 8: 15; Isaiah 2: 1; Lamentations 5: 9; Ezekiel 6: 14).7 The wilderness was dangerous because of the terrain, the climate and the wild animals, demons and monsters that roamed there.8 As George Williams notes, for the indigenous Canaanites the desert was peopled with dragons, demons and monsters of the night. And the Hebrews, settled in their midst, inevitably assimilated some of the native mythology and cultus . . . there were . . . the howling dragon and monster (tan, tannin), the

winged female night monster (lilith), which entered Hebrew demonology during the Babylonian exile.9 This understanding of the wilderness as the particular abode of dark and hostile forces is echoed in accounts of the Desert Fathers who ventured into the deserts of Egypt and Judea in the third and fourth centuries10 and are portrayed encountering fierce opposition from spiritual foes who sometimes appeared in the guise of wild beasts. Thus Athanasius describes demons attacking St Antony in the form of ‘lions, bears, leopards, bulls, and serpents, asps, scorpions and wolves’.11 The association of remote places with the demonic and monstrous can also be seen in Anglo-Saxon thought, as Guthlac wrestles with demonic monsters on his island near Crowland and Beowulf confronts the fen-dwelling monster Grendel.12 The wilderness is therefore a battleground, where evil, both internal and external, must be confronted, and where, by God’s grace, as when Jesus faced his own temptations (Luke 4), it may be overcome. In his analysis of the wilderness in Christian thought, Williams finds four principal concepts in the Old Testament: (a) the wilderness as a moral waste but a potential paradise, (b) the wilderness as a place of testing or even punishment, (c) the wilderness 7 8 9

Botterweck, Theological Dictionary, p. 101. Ibid., p. 115. George H. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought: The Biblical Experience of the Desert in the History of Christianity and the Paradise Theme in the Theological Idea of the University (New York, 1962), p. 13. Cf. Isaiah 34. 10 On the Desert Fathers and their influence on medieval English anchoritic spirituality, see also the essay by E. A. Jones in this volume. 11 Robert C. Gregg, trans., The Life of St. Anthony, Classics of Western Spirituality (London, 1980), p. 9. In Ancrene Wisse, the Seven Deadly Sins also appear in the form of wild animals lurking in the wilderness: see the epigraph to this essay. 12 The Old English poem Guthlac A places Guthlac ‘on þam anade’ [in the desert] (ll. 333, 356) (Bertram Colgrave, ed., Two Lives of St Cuthbert: A Life by an Anonymous Monk of Lindifarne and Bede’s Prose Life (Cambridge, 1940), p. 115); Grendel’s abode is ‘described by a bewildering number of terms (mearc, moras, fen, fæsten, and fifelcynnes eard) which have as their common feature their remoteness from human habitation’ (Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf Mss (Cambridge, 1995), p. 59). On Guthlac, see also the essay by E. A. Jones in this volume.

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23

as the experience or occasion of nuptial (covenantal) bliss, and (d) the wilderness as a place of refuge (protection) or contemplation (renewal).13

We shall find all of these themes taken up and explored in early and later medieval anchoritic spirituality. Hope and encounter The wilderness offered hope because of where it might lead. Literal deserts, such as those of Sinai, the Negev or the barren, rocky wilderness around Jerusalem, were essential to the fabric of the biblical narrative: it was through the desert that Abraham travelled in search of the land that God would show him, and in the desert that Moses endured forty years of wandering until the rebels had died out and a new generation could enter the Promised Land. Those two journey-narratives, so fundamental to Israelite identity, meant that within Judaism and Christianity the desert was not viewed as a place devoid of promise but as the way – the only way – to the Promised Land. 14 The wilderness also, paradoxically, offered a particular opportunity to experience God. God may have expelled humankind from the Garden of Eden, as, later, he would exile the Israelites from their Promised Land, but he did not entirely abandon them. And for all its terrors, perhaps because of them, the wilderness became a place where God could be encountered with awesome immediacy. Vulnerable, stripped bare of other props, compelled to face their own weaknesses, confronted with vast emptiness, individuals could, it seems, experience God with particular clarity. Moses, a nomadic shepherd tending his father-in-law’s flock ‘on the far side of the desert’, comes to Mount Horeb and turns aside to see the marvel of the bush that burned but was not consumed. It is there that God speaks to him and calls him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3: 1ff). In the solitude of the desert Elijah hears the still small voice of God (1 Kings 19: 4–18). With encounter came revelation and covenant. Andrew Louth underlines the role of the desert ‘as the place where God reveals himself to men and women’,15 citing the examples of Mount Sinai (or Horeb), where Moses receives the Ten Commandments (Exodus 19ff) and God speaks to Elijah (1 Kings 19: 8); the wilderness of Judea, where John the Baptist preaches repentance (Matthew 3: 1) and Christ retreats to pray; and Mount Tabor, where Christ is transfigured and the voice of God the Father speaks to his disciples (Mark 9: 2–8). Guidance and provision The wilderness is also a place of guidance, a place to journey with a God who demonstrates his presence by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire at night. ‘He led you through the vast and dreadful desert (in solitudine magna atque terribili), that thirsty and waterless land’ (Deuteronomy 8:15). The desert

13 Williams, Wilderness, p. 18. 14 Compare the quotation from Ancrene Wisse used as the epigraph to this essay. 15 Andrew Louth, The Wilderness of God (London, 1991), p. 26.

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is survivable because of the presence of God, who shepherds his people (Psalm 78:52 [Vulgate 77:52]) and miraculously provides for their needs as in the giving of manna during the Exodus (Exodus. 16). Refuge and courtship Paradoxically the wilderness also functions as a place of refuge in a fallen world: Hagar (Genesis 6: 6–14), Moses (Exodus 2: 15ff, 3: 1), David (1 Samuel 23: 14) and Elijah (1 Kings 19: 4) all fled to the wilderness. It is the place where the Psalmist longs to fly and be at rest (Psalm 55 [Vulgate 54]), where Jesus and his disciples retreat from the crowds (Mark 6: 31, Luke 9: 10). More than that, it is a place of courtship, what a recent Dictionary of Old Testament Theology engagingly calls ‘love in the midbar’.16 For all its terrors and challenges, the wilderness is also a place of tenderness and love, where God woos his people. Jeremiah 2: 2 speaks of God urging his people to remember how they were like a loving bride following God through the desert: ‘Go, and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying: Thus saith the Lord: I have remembered thee, pitying thy youth, and the love of thy espousals, when thou followedst me in the desert [in deserto], in a land that is not sown’; Hosea 2: 14–15 indicates the possibility of a return to that former intimacy: ‘I will allure her and will lead her into the wilderness [in solitudinem]: and I will speak to her heart . . . according to the days of her coming up out of the land of Egypt.’ It is not such a long way from the wilderness of Hosea to the garden of the Song of Songs (8: 5): ‘Who is this that cometh up from the desert [de deserto] . . . leaning upon her beloved?’17 Repentance and renewal The desert is therefore potentially a place of repentance, where God’s people may rediscover a relationship with him. This is clearly demonstrated in the New Testament account of the ministry of John the Baptist (Mark 1: 2–5). Finally the wilderness itself is portrayed as a place capable of renewal: Waters are broken out in the desert [in deserto], and streams in the wilderness [in solitudine] . . . In the dens where dragons dwelt before, shall rise up the verdure of the reed and the bulrush. And a path and a way shall be there, and it shall be called the holy way . . . No lion shall be there, nor shall any mischievous beast go up by it . . . but they shall walk there that shall be delivered . . . and shall come into Sion with praise. (Isaiah 35: 6–10)18

16 Botterweck, Theological Dictionary, p. 115. 17 ‘The fusion of the motif “love in the midbâr” with the wilderness sojourn tradition, a fusion found in

the book of Hosea and – presumably dependent on Hosea – in Jeremiah, played a decisive role in the formulation of the hypothesis of an Old Testament “desert ideal” ’ (ibid., pp. 115–16). 18 See also Isaiah 41: 18–19: ‘I will turn the desert (desertum) into pools of waters, and the impassable land into streams of waters. I will plant in the wilderness (in solitudine) the cedar, and the thorn, and the myrtle, and the olive tree: I will set in the desert (in deserto) the fir tree, the elm, and the box tree together.’

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If, therefore, all wilderness experience carries within it a fundamental sense of alienation and deprivation, of struggle for survival, of life on a spiritual knife-edge, it also carries, even within those hardships, the hope of encounter and intimacy, of life-transforming repentance and renewal.

The Wilderness in Accounts of the Desert Fathers In the Lives and Sayings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and in the accounts of John Cassian (d.c.432) and others who visited those living in the deserts of Egypt, Syria and Judea in the fourth and fifth centuries, we see the biblical concepts of the wilderness reworked and adapted to a new situation.19 Of course, these accounts were, as Benedicta Ward points out, produced by ‘outsiders’ and, moreover, written to promote specific agendas: [Cassian’s] Institutes and Conferences are not verbatim accounts of conversations with the monks of Egypt; they are a carefully constructed interpretation of the aims and methods of monastic Egypt for the use of the monks of the West . . . shaped by the theological and ethical ideas of John Cassian . . . an authoritative presentation of the early ascetic life in Egypt which Cassian knew at first hand, their aim was to show men how to understand that life and adapt it to different conditions.20

Similarly, in his hugely influential Life of Antony, Athanasius (c.295–373), a bishop frequently exiled from his diocese because of clashes with Arian heretics, seeks to make the desert attractive to others ‘to ensure the continuance of an episcopally-directed asceticism within an orthodox church’.21 In these texts, then, we have a dual process of adaptation. Firstly, considerable numbers of men and women living in a post-biblical age are choosing to engage with the desert and its spiritual potential, drawing much of their understanding from the Bible but also working from within their own cultural priorities. Secondly, their experience is, in turn, being interpreted and shaped in a way that will profoundly influence others. Athanasius’ Life of Antony becomes the paradigm for the genre of Christian hagiography; Cassian’s writings form a bridge between the literal deserts of the East and the wilderness equivalents sought and created by those living in the very different terrains of Western Europe. The scale of the movement to the desert during these early centuries of the Christian Church is, however, undeniable. In the often-cited words of Athanasius, ‘the desert was made a city by monks who left their own people and registered themselves for

19 Cf. Benedicta Ward, SLG, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources

(London & Oxford, 1987); Norman Russell, The Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Egypto, Cistercian Publications (London, Oxford & Kalamazoo, 1981); B. Ramsey, ed., John Cassian: The Conferences (New York, 1997). 20 Russell, Lives of Desert Fathers, Introduction, p. 10. 21 Marilyn Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2000), p. 10.

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the citizenship in heaven’.22 Some lived in community, others progressed to the solitary life, often moving further into the desert to pursue greater solitude.23 Why? What was the significance of the wilderness for these role models of the ascetic life and for those who shaped their legacy and transmitted it to succeeding generations? Whereas the wilderness was for the Israelites primarily a corporate experience, these later narratives focus largely upon individuals who embark upon spiritual, and literal, journeys which will decide the eternal destiny of their souls, and who offer, in the process, examples or warnings for others. These are, crucially, voluntary exiles, opting out of such transient security as the world has to offer in search of the eternal joys of heaven. Thus, in accounts such as the Lives of Antony and Pachomius, the Sayings and Lives of the Desert Fathers, and the writings of Rufinus, Jerome (c.330/347–420) and John Cassian, the wilderness is demonstrably a place of retreat: from the materialism of Rome and Alexandria; from the creeping institutionalisation and compromise seen to characterise the Church; and from the distractions and temptations that threaten the life of the spirit.24 Significantly, such acts of withdrawal were not unusual at the time: Anachôresis, whether as an act [undertaken] by people who could not pay their debts, or as flight from the overwhelming burden of taxation, or as a refuge from other heavy responsibilities, was a common feature in the life of Roman Egypt . . . At the same time . . . the withdrawal into the desert cannot be reduced to these factors . . . other, genuinely religious, motives . . . should not be discounted.25 The heroes of the desert, whose lives inspire later generations of anchorites, include Paul of Thebes who, according to Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit, initially moves into the desert to escape persecution but then falls in love with the place of solitude where he spends the rest of his life in prayer.26 Like Elijah, a key role model, along with Moses, John the Baptist and Christ, for the Desert Fathers, Paul is provided for by ravens, who normally bring half a loaf but thoughtfully increase it to a whole one when Antony comes to visit.27 This neat example of God’s provision in the wilderness echoes the manna that fell daily in the desert during the Exodus, with double rations supplied on the eve of the Sabbath (Exodus 16: 22–7). Visiting a group of monks deep in the desert, Rufinus (c.345–410), friend of Jerome, wrote, ‘This is the utter desert . . . they live alone in their cells and there 22 Gregg, St Anthony, p. 14. 23 Evidently, there were various levels of solitary life; most ‘solitaries’ retained links with the wider

24 25 26 27

monastic community, and there could be some degree of movement back and forth between ‘solitude’ and coenobitic life. See further Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism. Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasti cism under the Christian Empire (Oxford, 1966). Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York, 1993), pp. 41–2. P. Schaff and H. Wace, eds, St Jerome: Select Letters and Selected Works (repr. Grand Rapids, 1954), p. 300. Ibid., p. 301.

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is a huge silence and a great quiet there.’28 It was, however, a hard-won calm, for the wilderness was also a place of fierce spiritual conflict. Athanasius’ Life of Antony, a model for many subsequent hagiographers, presents a hero motivated by the desire for perfection and progress in the fight against evil. Antony’s experience suggests that the desert is a place not so much of retreat as of pitched battle. Enclosed in a tomb some distance from his village, he is attacked by demons, in the shape of lions, bears, leopards, bulls, serpents, scorpions and wolves, who wish to frighten him from the path to heaven. He then moves further into the wilderness and spends twenty years in complete solitude barricaded within a deserted fortress. Finally, besieged by the needy who have been attracted by his holiness, he is guided to the ‘inner mountain’. In his life, as in those of other desert figures, there are miracles, revelations and victory over endless temptations of the devil, which are designed, says Antony, ‘to make men sick of the solitary life as something burdensome and very oppressive’.29 The wilderness was a battlefield where temptations to fear, doubt and sin were to be overcome, and the victory of Christ, over the demonic forces that lurk in desert places, demonstrated. Cassian includes in his Conferences (3.18) this description of anchorites who move out from their monastic communities: They desire to engage the demons in an open struggle and in out-and-out combat, and they . . . penetrate the vast recesses of the desert in imitation of John the Baptist . . . and of Elijah and Elisha and the others whom the Apostle recalls thus: ‘They went about in sheepskin and in goatskin, in distress, afflicted, needy, the world unworthy of them, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves.’30

Mary of Egypt, the converted prostitute, flees from the sinfulness of her former life to find ‘rest’ in the desert. Significantly, her Life suggests that her greatest temptation, like that of the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt, is to look back, to desire the food, the wine, even the songs of her past life: I struggled for seventeen years with the wild beasts of huge and irrational desires; when I began to eat . . . I longed for the fish that they have in Egypt, I even desired the wine which had been so sweet to me . . . and now I craved that which I had used so much in the world. But here I did not even have water when I was burning in the heat . . . Also there came to me a great longing for songs of a lewd kind . . . making me remember the devilish songs I had learned to sing in the world.31

Accounts of the Desert Fathers and Mothers depict the wilderness as a place of ongoing conversion, a place of repentance, where God could be sought with a wholeheartedness not possible elsewhere. All their asceticism is focused on that end. Neither the solitude of the wilderness, nor the ascetic practices for which it provides so appropriate a backdrop, are in themselves the anchorite’s goal; both 28 29 30 31

Russell, Lives, pp. 148–9. Gregg, St Anthony, p. 50. Ramsey, John Cassian, p. 639. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, p. 50.

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are means to an end: encounter with God. The key elements in their way of life are prayer (‘life continually turned towards God’);32 engagement with the scriptures;33 the direction of an ‘abba’ or spiritual father; and the exercise of charity. Discipline is important, but over-enthusiastic ascetic practice is frequently rebuked by the exercise of sanctified common sense.34 Moving into the wilderness in pursuit of holiness of life did not, however, mean automatic escape from the world and its concerns. On the contrary, holy men and women were pursued into the desert by a constant stream of visitors, some desirous of imitating their lifestyle, others seeking counsel, prayer and even miraculous intervention.35 The dangers of being drawn away from the core commitment to stability and prayer are highlighted in words attributed to Antony: ‘Just as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of their inner peace.’36 The problem of maintaining physical, mental, spiritual and emotional detachment from the world also occurs repeatedly in medieval teaching on the anchoritic life. The literal wilderness was not only a place where individuals could encounter God but also a symbolic state that represented many past interactions between God and his people. Thus Basil the Great (330–379), a hermit who later became bishop of Caesarea, declared: I am living . . . in the desert in which the Lord lived. Here is the oak of Mamre; here is the ladder going up to heaven, and the stronghold of the angels which Jacob saw . . . Here is Mount Carmel where Elias sojourned and pleased God . . . Here is the wilderness in which the blessed John ate locusts and preached repentance to men . . . Here is Christ the lover of the wilderness . . . ‘Here is the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto life.’ Here are the teachers and prophets ‘wandering in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth’. (XLII)37

For some, the desert was entirely symbolic. Speaking of a young girl whose lifestyle in many respects anticipated the anchoresses of the Middle Ages, Jerome claimed: ‘Shut up in her narrow cell she roamed through paradise . . . she sought her delight in solitude and found for herself a monkish hermitage in the centre of busy Rome’ (Letter XXIV, 3–4).38 For certain women, strict enclosure was a favoured option. Thus Thais, the redeemed prostitute, is enclosed in a cell to seek forgiveness;39 a second prostitute, taken to a desert monastery, 32 Ibid., p. xii. 33 ‘Holiness in the desert was defined, finally, by how deeply a person allowed himself or herself to be

transformed by the words of Scripture’ (Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, p. 23). Ward, Harlots of the Desert, p. xxiii. Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism, p. 19. Ward, Harlots of the Desert, p.10. P. Schaff and H. Wace, St Basil: Letters and Select Works , vol. I (New York, 1894), p. 146. Schaff and Wace, St Jerome, p. 43; cf. Joanne McNamara, ‘Muffled Voices: The Lives of Consecrated Women in the Fourth Century’, Medieval Religious Women. Volume One: Distant Echoes, ed. John A. Nichols and Lillian Thomas Shank, Cistercian Publications (Kalamazoo, 1984), pp. 11–19. 39 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, ch. 5. See also Dunn, Emergence of Monasticism, pp. 55–8, on the move towards enclosure. 34 35 36 37 38

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begs for complete enclosure: ‘Since I have grieved God greatly by my sins, do me the kindness of putting me in a cell and shutting it completely and giving me a little bread and some work through the window.’40 The desert was still a place of temptation; apparently, women whose sexuality had already proved a snare and might still be a threat to themselves (and others) were best completely isolated. For all its perils and hardship, the wilderness remains a place of beauty, where the soul in pursuit of God may even, for a time, anticipate the joys of Paradise. Jerome, in poetic mood, declared: O desert, bright with the flowers of Christ! . . . O wilderness, gladdened with God’s especial presence! . . . Does the boundless solitude of the desert terrify you? In the spirit you may walk always in Paradise. (Letter XIV)41

The Wilderness in Anglo-Saxon Spirituality As we have seen, the Desert Fathers were already refashioning the theme of the wilderness for their own situation. Those who sought to imitate their quest for holiness and interpret the desert experience within the very different climates and terrains of Western Europe needed to be even more adaptable. The influential biography by Sulpicius Severus shows Martin of Tours (c.316–397) building a cell two miles outside the city, in a spot ‘so secluded and remote that it had all the solitude of the desert’.42 The Celtic peregrini [pilgrims], denied in Ireland the deserts to which the hermits of Egypt had retreated, launched forth in small boats to seek ‘deserts in the ocean’ (Adomnan, Life of Columba I.6)43 and the remains of their tiny beehive huts can still be seen clinging precariously to rocky islands off the Irish coast. This activity was not simply the product of individual enthusiasm and self-determination. Once again there is a close relationship between developments in coenobitic monasticism and the more specialised eremitic life, and evidence of attempts to combine, and move between, the two.44 As Jones notes elsewhere in this volume, St Benedict in his Rule identified a role for anchorites or hermits who are ready to progress to the ‘single combat of the desert’ (Chapter 1).45 Thus the church that emerged in Anglo-Saxon England inherited a rich variety of possible interpretations of the wilderness, drawn not only from the biblical narrative and accounts of the

40 Ward, Harlots of the Desert, p. 79. 41 Schaff and Wace, St Jerome, p. 10. Cf. Williams: ‘It was among the hermits and monks that the

42 43 44 45

biblical sense lived on of the ambiguity of the wilderness of Sinai and the wilderness of Jordan, the wilderness of temptation and the wilderness which is a provisional paradise with saints and beasts in harmony’ (Wilderness, p. 39). Thomas F. X. Noble and Thomas Head, eds, Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 1995), p. 10. A. O. Anderson and M. O. Anderson, eds, Adomnan’s Life of Columba (London, 1961), p. 31. Cf. Jacques Le Goff, ‘The Wilderness in the Medieval West’, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1988), p. 50. See also Timothy Fry et al., eds, The Rule of St. Benedict (Collegeville, MN, 1981), p. 169.

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Desert Fathers but also from more recent models. The varying accounts of the manner in which St Cuthbert (b.c.635) embarked upon the solitary life give a fascinating insight into contemporary perspectives.46 The anonymous Life shows him slipping away secretly from his role as prior of Melrose Abbey (III.I);47 in Bede’s prose Life, he makes an orderly and approved transition to life on Farne (XVII).48 Bede’s account shows Cuthbert, like the Desert Fathers before him, being miraculously fed (XVIII), demonstrating extreme asceticism (XVIII), facing demonic attacks (XXII) and constantly being sought by visitors in need of counsel and practical help (XXII). Unsurprisingly, given the common tradition that shapes these narratives, Felix’s Life of Guthlac displays many similar elements. Guthlac’s fenland retreat, where he deliberately seeks out his spiritual foes, is constantly referred as a desert (heremus). His temptations, like those of the Desert Fathers upon whom he models himself, include attacks by monster-demons who seek to drive him from the desert (XXXI),49 and encourage him to excessive fasting (XXX). He too attracts many visitors, drawn by his holiness (XLV). Thus the desire for solitude, commitment to asceticism and a determination to take the spiritual battle into the devil’s own territory are all evident in Anglo-Saxon engagement with the wilderness. There are moments of revelation, for example Guthlac’s twice-daily visits from an angel (L), but, like Cuthbert’s, his is essentially an heroic venture, characterised by harsh penance and painful progress towards heaven. This is the biblical wilderness filtered through the austere, gladiatorial spirituality of the East.

The Wilderness in Medieval English Anchoritic Spirituality As E. A. Jones makes clear in his contribution to this volume, hermits of various types continued to populate the spiritual landscape of Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and monks and nuns continued to practise solitude within the broader context of the monastic vocation. From the twelfth century onwards, however, another strand of interpretation of the wilderness motif emerges, which may, I suspect, look back more directly to the biblical tradition. This development was fuelled partly by the need to provide further opportunities for women to pursue their spiritual vocation and partly by the changing preoccupations of late-medieval spirituality. Patricia Rosof notes the ‘confluence of economic, demographic and religious’ forces in the twelfth century that brought about a ‘preponderance of female over male recluses’.50 As monastic 46 Cf. Clare Stancliffe, ‘Cuthbert and the Polarity between Pastor and Solitary’, in St Cuthbert, His Cult

47 48 49 50

and His Community to AD 1200, ed. G. Bonner, D. Rollason and C. Stancliffe (Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 31–3. Colgrave, Two Lives of St Cuthbert, p. 95. Ibid., p. 215. Bertram Colgrave, ed., Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge, 1956), p. 101. Patricia J. F. Rosof, ‘The Anchoress in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Medieval Religious Women. Volume Two: Peaceweavers, ed. Lilian Thomas Shank and John A. Nichols, Cistercian Publications 72 (Kalamazoo, 1987), p.123; cf. Elizabeth Robertson, ‘An Anchorhold of Her Own: Female Anchoritic Literature in Thirteenth-Century England’, in Equally in God’s Image: Women in the

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orders became less willing to admit women, and the numbers of unmarried women remained substantial,51 the anchoritic life increasingly offered a way for the pious woman. As adapted for women, the anchoritic life required an internalisation and, to some extent, a domestication of the wilderness. Mary of Egypt may have run naked in the desert; such behaviour would hardly have been practical in medieval England. Indeed, as Ann Warren points out, those women who did seek to become hermits were usually absorbed, either voluntarily or under direction, into a community, because of the intrinsic dangers, both physical and spiritual, that life in the literal wilderness involved.52 In both Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum and the Ancrene Wisse, addressed to those who had chosen to embrace the inner experience of the desert through enclosure, we see a softening and a broadening of the anchoritic calling which recaptures the rich variety of the biblical wilderness motif.53 The Desert Fathers and Mothers feature among the major role models offered to the recipients of texts such as Ancrene Wisse;54 at the same time, considerable space is devoted to biblical figures who dramatise the benefits of the solitary life: Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, who ‘fleh his hali cun . . . wende in to anli stude & wunede i þe wildernesse’55 [fled his holy family . . . went into a solitary place and lived in the wilderness];56 the Virgin Mary and Christ himself:57 Of Godd ane were inoh forbisne to alle, þe wende himself into anli stude, & feaste theras he was ane i wildernesse.58 [God alone is example enough to all, who himself went into a solitary place and fasted while he was alone in the wilderness.]59

Temptation is still a major element in this wilderness; indeed, as Anne Savage points out, the anchoress ‘is there to be tempted’.60 The emphasis, however, is now on resistance to the inevitable manifestations of the Devil’s wiles rather than on aggressive invasion of enemy territory. In Ancrene Wisse, the wilderness is still the supreme way to the high Jerusalem, and so there are still perils lurking in the forms of the Seven Deadly Sins, which seek to destroy all travel-

51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60

Middle Ages, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright and Joan Bechtold (New York & London, 1990), pp. 170–83. Rosof, ‘Anchoress’, p. 124. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons , pp. 199–201. See further comment on both texts elsewhere in this volume, especially in Barratt’s essay. The author cites Paul and Antony, Hilarion, Syncletica, Sarah and many others like them (Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse, p. 84). See also the Myrour of Recluses: A Middle English Translation of Speculum Inclusorum., ed. Martha Powell Harley (Madison, 1995). Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse, p. 83. Savage and Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality, p. 107. On the relationship of this section to the Carthusian Consuetudines, drawn up by Guigo I c.1128, see also Alexandra Barratt, ‘Anchoritic Aspects of Ancrene Wisse’, Medium Aevum 49 (1980), pp. 32–56. Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse, p. 84. Savage and Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality, p. 108. Anne Savage, ‘The Solitary Heroine: Aspects of Meditation and Mysticism in Ancrene Wisse, the Katherine Group, and the Wooing Group’, in Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England, ed. William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (Cambridge, 1997), p. 71.

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lers in the wilderness of the solitary life.61 There is also explicit reference to the Israelites’ experience in the Exodus, to illustrate the somewhat unpalatable fact that life in the anchorhold will not get more easy but more difficult: ‘Al o þis ilke wise þa he walde his folc leaden ut of þeowdom he dude for ham al þet ha wolden . . . I þe desert forðre þa he hefde ilead ham feor i þe wildernesse he lette ham þolien.’62 [In just the same way, when he wished to lead his people out of slavery . . . he did for them all they wanted . . . Later, in the desert, when he had led them far into the wilderness, he let them suffer.]63 For the anchoress there is always spiritual danger, temptation and inner conflict. There is still, crucially, the temptation to look back, to regret, to grumble. The sins of discontent against which anchoresses are warned may seem petty enough, but not when we remember the Exodus. I suggest that one of the reasons there is so much time spent on the horrors of marriage in anchoritic literature is that authors are deeply concerned to prevent ‘looking back’ of the kind that brought the Israelites to grief. Thus, significantly, Hali Meiðhad speaks of marriage as slavery from which those pledged to virginity have been delivered.64 Nicholas Watson comments: Hali Meiðhad does not necessarily represent the whole view of sex held either by its author or by its audience. It is, rather, an exercise written for those who have already repudiated sexual activity and family ties, intended to confirm them in a sense of the rightness of their action, and to fortify them for the future.65 There is still a residual need to link the anchoritic life with heroic endeavour, and the lives of the virgin saints such as those in the Katherine group help to fulfil this function: Saints Katherine, Margaret and Juliana are exempla of a heroic feminine spirituality dramatically and publically [sic] expressing the ideals of the anchoritic life: virginity; fidelity to Christ the bridegroom; the rejection of materialistic, worldly marriage . . . constant temptations by the devil and terrible physical suffering.66

Some anchoresses, such as Christina of Markyate, do have to show real courage and endure physical suffering to pursue their calling; for others the chief perils seem to be boredom, flirtation and an unseemly predilection for gossip: small 61 62 63 64

Tolkien, Ancrene Wisse, p. 109. Ibid., p. 113. Savage and Watson, Anchoritic Spirituality, p. 128. Hali Meiðhad ‘has as its main purpose the exploration of those very fantasies which are most dangerous to the woman committed to virginity and the anchoritic life: sex, marriage and children. The treatise methodically constructs and dismantles visions of happiness in these things’ (Savage, ‘Solitary heroine’ p. 79). 65 Nicholas Watson, ‘The Methods and Objectives of Thirteenth-Century Anchoritic Devotion’, The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. Marion Glasscoe, Exeter Symposium IV (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 138–9. 66 Savage, ‘Solitary heroine’, p. 67. Watson comments: ‘Juliana dramatises the choice the anchoritic audience has had to make in turning from the world, manifesting its costliness, its rightness and not least its heroic nature’ (‘Methods and Objectives’, pp. 139–40)

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matters, but in the wilderness context still dangerous. It was pettiness rather than dramatic misdemeanors that in the end brought the Israelites down, the failure to persevere, to keep the goal in mind, to obey on a daily basis. There is, however, also an increasing interest in the elements of encounter, experience and intimacy with God. This of course accords well with the developing preoccupations of medieval English spirituality. The anchorhold, as Aelred points out in his De Institutione Inclusarum, is a place of refuge from the world.67 It is also a place of wooing. Here the words of Jeremiah and Hosea about ‘love in the midbar’ synthesise with the medieval focus on Christ as lover, famously elaborated in Ancrene Wisse, and a growing emphasis on contemplation rather than battle. Just as the representation of Christ has moved from that of young hero to lover-knight, so the anchorite moves from heroic warrior to beloved spouse.

Conclusion In this very brief survey I have sought to illustrate the richness and fluidity of the wilderness motif. It is, I believe, in that very richness and fluidity that its continuing power throughout the centuries resides. Why do Antony, Martin, Cuthbert, Guthlac seek their different kinds of desert? Why does a thirteenth-century anchoress, snugly ensconced next to a church in a bustling medieval town, with her servants and her cat and her needlework, still need to feel that she is in the wilderness? The wilderness, whether external or internal, offers focus: it is the place where human security is stripped away, spiritual experience is intensified and issues become clearer. The wilderness of the anchoritic life is extraordinarily flexible; whether you are a converted warrior seeking new battlegrounds or a young woman seeking greater closeness to God, it can accommodate you. And in the midst of the testing, hardship, uncertainty and spiritual conflict it offers the possibility of an intimacy of experience that will not be found elsewhere. The writer of the Song of Songs asks, ‘Who is this coming up from the desert leaning on her lover?’ (8: 5). For the writers and practitioners we have been considering, the answer would have been quite simple: it is an anchorite.

67 John Ayto and Alexandra Barrett, eds, Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum: Two Middle

English Translations, EETS OS 287 (Oxford, 1984), p. 1.

THE DEVOTIONAL LIFE OF THE LAITY IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES

3 The Devotional Life of the Laity in the Late Middle Ages VALERIE EDDEN

A

WINDOW in the parish church at Waterperry (Oxfordshire), reproduced ibelow, shows us Walter Curson and his sons at prayer.1 Between Walter and his eldest son, Richard, a book lies open, as a prompt to their devotions. Like many households, the Cursons probably owned a Book of Hours, a volume often beautifully illustrated and richly decorated.2 Books of Hours (known also as primers) were a collection of psalms and prayers for daily recitation,3 derived ultimately from the ‘canonical hours’ or Divine Office,4 the daily cycle of prayers said at regular intervals during the day and night by priests and in monasteries. Whether the Curson family could follow the Latin text or whether the picture is symbolic rather than historically accurate we cannot know; maybe in reality they focused on the pictures while their chaplain said the prayers. Obviously the production of such volumes involved conspicuous expense, and their value as gifts and bequests was partly as luxury material objects. Nonetheless we have every reason to believe that the office played a significant part in the devotional life of the laity in the late Middle Ages. Cicely, duchess of York (1415–90), had a daily routine clearly modelled on the monastic life, rising

1 2

3

4

This photograph is reproduced here by kind permission of David Griffith, from whose private collection it is taken. For an account of such images, see Lucy F. Sandler, ‘The Image of the Book Owner in the Fourteenth Century’, in England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton Symposium , ed. Nicholas Rogers (Stamford, 1993), pp. 58–80, and David Griffith, ‘A Portrait of the Reader: Secular Donors and their Books in the Art of the English Parish Church’, in Imagining the Book, ed. John Thompson and Steven Kelly (Brepols, forthcoming). For a more general account of Books of Hours, see R. S. Wieck, ed., Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Life and Art (New York, 1988). Jonathon Hughes discusses Richard III’s Book of Hours and how it is personalised for his use, The Religious Life of Richard III: Piety and Prayer in the North of England (Stroud, 1997), pp. 104–5. A typical example would contain the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, the fifteen gradual psalms (120–134), the seven penitential psalms (6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143), the Litany of Saints and the Office for the Dead. These were prayers that could be said privately by monks in addition to their normal offices. Note that there are two systems for numbering the psalms; that used here is the Hebrew numbering used in the Authorised Version of the Bible and most modern English translations. The Latin Vulgate, which was the standard text of the Bible in the Middle Ages, follows the numbering of the Greek Septuagint. There were seven offices said at regular intervals during the day: Lauds at daybreak, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, which was said just before going to bed. There was also a night office (Mattins), usually said at midnight.

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Walter Curson and his sons, portrayed in a window at Waterperry Parish Church.

early so that her chaplain could say the morning office with her, attending daily Mass, hearing devotional books read while she ate and saying (or hearing said) evensong and the evening office.5 Such a lifestyle was the privilege of the rich and leisured, but lowlier women aspired to it, as we know from the life of Margery Kempe (discussed elsewhere in the volume) who, as daughter of a Mayor of Lynn and wife of a burgess, was obliged to combine her devotional life with domestic responsibilities such as brewing and tending to the needs of her husband, not to mention childbearing. Books of Hours became more widely available after the advent of printing, by which time the needs of an increasingly literate laity were being met also by less costly paper manuscripts of vernacular prayers.6 A Book of Hours was one of the first books printed by Caxton (in 1475/6)7 and more than 760 editions in Latin, English and in both languages 5 6

7

C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘The Piety of Cicely, Duchess of York: A Study in Late Medieval Culture’, reprinted in England, France and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1983), p. 141. See Martha W. Driver, ‘Pictures in Print: Late Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-century English Religious Books for Lay Readers’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late-Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 229–44. See Mary Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, III,

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(but mostly in Latin) were produced for use in England before 1560. It has been estimated that this would be about a quarter of a million copies.8 This essay tells the story of how such books and devotional practices spread from the monasteries and came to have a new role in the life of the laity in the fifteenth century. They nurtured the interior lives of the laity by encouraging prayer and meditation, creating a context in which some men and women felt compelled to follow a contemplative or eremitic life. It is also argued that, while hermits and contemplatives spent time in solitary communion with God, they are nonetheless best perceived as a part of a praying community, the body of Christ. The Christian Church grew from Jewish roots, and the prayer life of the early church was naturally modelled on Jewish practice, with a daily and annual pattern of prayers and readings, in which the psalms played a central part. It is easy to understand the appeal of the psalms, which were first composed over a very long period (between the tenth and sixth centuries BC) and gathered together probably in the second century BC. They include every kind of song and responses to all kinds of moods and situations: thanking God for his gifts, praising his goodness, feeling awe in his presence, guilt, despair, remorse, or even anger and making requests for God’s help. There are psalms for those beset by their enemies, for those in fear of death, in exile and for those who have cause to be joyful. They were particularly valued because Jesus used the words of a psalm to call upon God as he hung upon the cross (‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’, Psalm 22: 1) and because during the Middle Ages they were reinterpreted in new ways and appropriated for personal use. It was commonly (but erroneously) believed that they were all written by King David and that Psalm 51 (‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according to thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions . . .’) was written after he had fallen in love with the beautiful Bathsheba and arranged for her husband to meet his death in the front line of battle. It became the archetypal expression of remorse. Some psalms were interpreted Christologically, that is they were taken to prophesy Jesus or indeed to be his own words, as for example, Psalm 102: 2–4, where the psalmist cries out in his sorrow: ‘Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me. In the day when I call, answer me speedily. For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten and withered as grass . . .’ The monastic Rule (or way of life) drawn up by Benedict of Nursia (c.540), the model for all later rules, conceived of human beings as a blend of body, mind and spirit, made in the image of God, to be sustained by spiritual as well as bodily food. Central to the monastic life is the Divine Office, but time was apportioned also to manual labour, sleep, study and regular meals. The daily office has a cycle of prayers and biblical readings, which include praise and

8

1400–1557, ed. Lotte Hellinga and J. B. Trapp (Cambridge, 1999), p. 500. This edition was almost certainly produced in Bruges, not in Westminster. Ibid., pp. 495–6. Even where texts are in Latin or were printed abroad, it is possible to be certain that they were for use in England, since English liturgical use was distinctive; the rite known as the Sarum (that is Salisbury) rite was used throughout most of Britain by the mid-fifteenth century.

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thanksgiving, confession, and the assurance of forgiveness and intercession. It draws to a close with Compline, which is said just before going to bed and in which body and soul are commended into God’s safe keeping. Historically the office is a public act not a private devotion, and generally the whole community gathered together for each of the seven offices, though there were exceptions to this. For example, Carmelite friars, who slept in separate cells rather than in a communal dormitory, said the office in private. The Christian religion is based on belief in a transcendent and personal God, who created the universe and who is present in the life of the world and who has forged a new relationship with humanity through the life and death of Jesus Christ. The two new commandments of Jesus, to love God and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, form the basis of Christian piety: the development of a personal relationship with God and an acceptance of one’s responsibility in the community. The balance between the two varies both within individuals and at different historical moments. It has been argued that the late Middle Ages were a period in which the private and the personal became dominant. For the fifteenth-century gentleman, hearing Mass in his own pew or his private, domestic chapel and following the service in his own service-book, the experience of worship was very different from that of his grandfather who stood without book in the company of other parishioners. 9 However, we must not be led into thinking that religion in the Middle Ages was ever the matter of personal choice or private conscience that it has largely become in the contemporary Western world. Mass was (and is) always a corporate activity, whether it is said in a parish church or a religious house or in the private chapel of a wealthy household. The Mass, too, had its origins in Jewish religious practice. The Last Supper shared by Jesus and his disciples was itself a ceremonial occasion, the Paschal Meal, which recalled the safe passage of the Israelites out of Egypt, from slavery into freedom, from darkness into light. For Christians, the ceremony took on a new significance, the ‘Eucharist’ or thanksgiving, so called because the Eucharist became an act of thanksgiving for the life and death of Jesus Christ. During the Middle Ages there was a shift in the understanding of the Eucharist. The Jewish Paschal Meal was itself associated with sacrifice; before leaving Egypt each Israelite family had sacrificed a lamb and marked the door of their house with its blood. The Eucharist was understood increasingly as a memorial to, and then a re-enactment of, Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. By the Council of Trent (1562), which formalised the doctrine of the Catholic Church and distinguished it clearly from new Protestant doctrines, the Mass was seen primarily as a sacrifice, a rite that is in itself propitiatory, that is, gaining the favour and forgiveness of God. The liturgy joined inner and outer, private meaning and outward action. Similarly, it combined private and communal religion. The language of hymns often expresses shared experience (‘Te deum laudamus!’, ‘We praise thee O Lord!’); the Lord’s Prayer uses a plural pronoun throughout (‘Pater noster . . . panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie’, ‘Our father . . . give us this day our daily 9

See Colin Richmond, ‘Religion and the Fifteenth-Century English Gentleman’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century , ed. Barrie Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 193–204.

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bread’). Other prayers are necessarily individual. The creed is personal (‘Credo’, ‘I believe’), and so is the Confession (‘Confiteor deo . . . mea culpa . . . mea maxima culpa,’, ‘I confess to God . . . through my own fault . . . through my own most grievous fault’).10 The Eucharist too is both shared and individual, a communal act, partaken individually by each communicant as a member of the body of Christ in the Church, understood either ‘as individual wholeness or as rightly ordered human community’, as Eamon Duffy aptly puts it. 11 For lay and religious alike, it was the annual cycle of services with its prayers and readings that helped to impose order and meaning on life, to explain to the medieval Christian who s/he was and where s/he fitted in the scheme of things, not just in spiritual terms but in everyday life. The cycle of readings told the story of God’s dealings with humanity from the creation through the revelation of his divine plan in Jesus and the long preparation for it among the Chosen People, the founding of the Church and looking forward to the Last Day. It was a story made familiar by paintings on walls and rood-screens in churches, and in manuscript illuminations and on an even more popular level in the mystery cycles of drama, enacted annually by guildsmen in the major cities, such as York, Coventry and Chester. The annual cycle worked at different levels. It celebrated the life, death and ministry of Jesus. Its rhythms chimed with the natural cycle of the seasons and the annual pattern of dearth and plenty. The feast of Christmas was kept at the winter solstice, and the resurrection celebrated with the rebirth of the natural world in spring, after the abstinence of Lent. At parish level the rites of passage, birth, marriage and death, were marked with religious services, as was the seasonal cycle on the land, in which there was Plough Sunday to bless the plough for the winter ploughing, Rogationtide processions, designed not only to bring blessing and fertility to the land, but also to ‘beat the bounds’, that is, to mark out the boundaries of the parish, and Lammas, a thanksgiving for the harvest.12 The church building, far from being a separate sacred place, was a place where business was transacted, disputes were settled and entertainments took place.13 There were inevitably those who were scandalised by such a blurring of distinction between sacred and secular; others were more acquiescent about practices which made the church the hub of community life. Another strand in the annual cycle was the veneration of saints, whose godly lives provided paradigms of holiness for imitation, or more realistically, for admiration. The calendar of feast days was twofold. There was the ‘Temporale’, the cycle of feast days that celebrated the life and death of Christ and the founding of the church; alongside this was the ‘Sanctorale’ (or Festial), the

10 One of the changes introduced into the Book of Common Prayer is a change of pronoun in the Confes-

sion, which changes it from an act of individual penitence to a corporate act: ‘We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. . . .’ 11 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven & London, 1992), pp. 91–2. 12 For an account of parish life, see Duffy, ibid. and Katherine L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001). 13 J. G. Davies, Secular Use of Church Buildings (London, 1968), chs 2 and 3.

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annual cycle commemorating individual saints. The latter replaced one or more of the set biblical readings with a brief life of the saint whose feast it was. Holidays were of course once ‘holy days’. In the late Middle Ages the vigil of St John the Baptist (23 June) was celebrated with bonfires in the streets and on the hillsides, and these midsummer fires were often accompanied by feasts.14 Feast days provided the opportunity for the expression of national and local pride, since there was local variation about which saints were venerated. The feast day of a local saint or of the saint to whom the local parish church or monastery was dedicated provided a proper excuse for a party. Such rituals no doubt celebrated community and neighbourliness as much as they venerated John the Baptist. Just as now there are those who celebrate Christmas and Easter without a thought of their religious significance, so then there were those whose revels made scant reference to the Church. It is difficult to assess how far lay people were involved in the religious life of their community, or indeed what they understood of their faith, particularly in the early Middle Ages. Religious worship had been increasingly clericalised. The Mass was said in Latin behind a rood-screen; the role of the laity was more as spectators than as participants. The Fourth Lateran Council, called by Pope Innocent III in 1215 to formulate the Catholic faith and to strengthen it against increasing threats from heresy, addressed the whole issue of the responsibility of the clergy towards the laity in their parishes, laying out a scheme of elementary Christian education and lay participation in the life of the Church. It also enjoined annual confession on all Christian people. Annual confession not only required the individual to examine his or her conscience for wrongdoing but also gave the confessor opportunity to establish whether people had a basic knowledge of their faith. These papal edicts were re-enforced in England by Archbishop Peckham in 1281 in his tract Ignorantia Sacerdotum (The Ignorance of Priests), which drew up the basic minimum instruction to be expounded four times a year in every parish. It comprised the basic tenets of the faith as laid out in the Apostles’ Creed, the ten Commandments and the two new commandments of Jesus: ‘Love the Lord your God with your whole heart . . . and love your neighbour as yourself ’ (Matthew 22: 37–9), together with the essential prayers of the faith (the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Angelic Salutation),15 and further instruction on Christian living, virtues and vices. Peckham’s tract was translated into English in 1357 in The Lay Folks’ Catechism , and there were many later revisions and adaptations. Chaucer’s Parson seems to embody the ideal of a parish priest envisaged by Innocent: A lerned man, a clerk, That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche; His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche . . .

14 Charles Pythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry’, in Crisis and

Order in English Towns 1500–1700: Essays in Urban History, ed. Peter Clark and Paul Slack (Toronto, 1972), pp. 57–85. 15 This last develops from the greeting of the angel to Mary at the Annunciation (Luke 1: 28): ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.’

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But rather wolde he yeven, out of doute, Unto his povre parisshens aboute Of his offryng and eek of his substaunce . . . Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer asonder, But he ne lefte nat, for reyn ne thonder, In siknesse nor in meschief to visite The ferreste in his parisshe.16

Innocent’s edict had a widespread and lasting effect. It reminded bishops of their duties as teachers, reformed parish clergy and opened up new possibilities for the spiritual life of the laity. Its timing coincided with the rapid rise and spread of the Mendicant orders.17 The Fourth Lateran Council also forbad the formation of new religious orders, thus limiting the orders of friars to four: Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite and Augustinian. The Dominicans, officially recognised in 1216, had (and have) a primary interest in study, teaching and preaching, as their title (‘Order of Preachers’) indicates, but all the orders of friars were involved in preaching. In England, by the late Middle Ages, most friars were better equipped by education to teach and preach and hear confessions than many parish priests, particularly after the Black Death, which had a devastating effect on the parish clergy, whose role it was to tend the sick and the dying and conduct funerals.18 By the late fourteenth century, friars had a very considerable influence on the religious life of the laity, preaching popular sermons, and hearing confessions. John Bale, the sixteenth-century historian of the Carmelite order, tells of the friar William Badby, whose sermons attracted a large popular following ‘as if to a public spectacle’ and who also mixed with the aristocracy, was confessor to John of Gaunt and preached in the presence of the aristocracy.19 One direct consequence of the new responsibilities laid upon clergy was the provision of texts that helped them in their task. There were, for example, countless penitential handbooks, designed to teach priests how to hear confessions; what the individual lay person needed was help in reflecting on his or her own life and acknowledging how far he had fallen short of the way of life required of one committed to following the teachings of Christ. Such handbooks provided a systematic way of distinguishing right from wrong. Thus (to give a rather trivial example), while a man might remember the regrettable consequences of his having had too much to drink on Saturday night, the priest might help him to formulate his regret in terms of the sin of gluttony. The first such handbooks were in Latin, but vernacular translations soon followed (stan16 The Canterbury Tales, A480–494, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford,

1988), p. 31. 17 The Mendicant orders, the friars, differed from monks in that they aimed to live a life of poverty and

so were forbidden to own property in common or to accept money. They were obliged to work or beg for their living. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209; Dominic founded the Dominicans in 1220–1. 18 Friars had a bad press in the Middle Ages: see Penn Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton, 1986). 19 MS London, BL Harley 3838, fol. 57v (79v new pagination). For John of Gaunt’s dealings with Badby and other Carmelite friars, see Anthony Goodman, The Exercise of Princely Power in FourteenthCentury Europe (London, 1992), pp. 241–8.

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dards of Latinity were very variable within the clergy), and these were followed by handbooks aimed at the laity themselves. The education of the laity in the faith was also furthered by vernacular books of instruction such as The Lay Folks’ Catechism , which in fact served a dual readership of ill-educated clergy as well as literate laity.20 Other texts aimed to help the laity understand the Mass and to behave appropriately while it was being said. The Lay Folks’ Mass Book , composed in French by Jeremy, canon of Rouen and York and archdeacon of Cleveland, was prepared for the use of a noble household with a private chapel. As English began to replace French as the language of the gentry in the fourteenth century, it was translated into English.21 It explains what the priest is doing, provides translations of many of the prayers and gives prayers to be said privately during the ceremony. In addition to books of religious instruction, devotional texts in the vernacular became widely available in the late Middle Ages. The line between these texts and pedagogic material is necessarily thin. Those manuals that prepared people for confession began the process of cultivating an inner life. Compunction, awareness of one’s own shortcomings/sinfulness, led both to regret and also to gratitude for the redemption offered through Jesus Christ. The large number of manuscripts that survive and the extent to which they are annotated give witness to their popularity; the range of manuscripts, from de luxe vellum manuscripts, richly illuminated, right through to cheap paper volumes, indicates the social range of those who owned them, not to mention those newly able to afford such books once they were printed. There was a wide range of written material to aid the spiritual life. Many manuscripts (even those that were otherwise largely secular in content) contain prayers. There were formal, liturgical prayers, such as those in the Lay Folks’ Mass Book, and at the other end of the spectrum were popular, affective prayers, which evoke feelings of love for Jesus or the Virgin, sorrow at Christ’s suffering on the cross and so on. 22 As well as prayers, more meditative material was available. This, like the Book of Hours, largely derived from monastic practice. While some monks ‘studied’ the Scriptures in a scholarly way, with commentaries and other similar aids, all monks engaged in lectio divina (holy reading), a practice that involved reading, reciting, memorising and reflecting on biblical passages. The spiritual life was generally understood as being lived on many levels, of which lectio divina was the first. This led to more sustained meditation in the form of structured reflection on a chosen theme, often a biblical theme or a scene from the life of Christ, aimed at increasing spiritual insight and leading towards the involvement of the will and the emotions. The higher stages of meditation, the 20 The Lay Folks’ Catechism , ed. T. F. Simmons and H. E. Nolloth, EETS OS 118 (1901). See Sue

Powell, ‘The Transmission and Circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism ’, in Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. A. J. Minnis (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 67–84. 21 Lay Folk’s Mass Book, ed. T. F. Simmons, EETS OS 71 (London, 1871). 22 The best introduction to the medieval religious lyric is still Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968).

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practice of contemplation, involved spiritual rather than rational understanding, and was generally wordless and non-discursive. ‘This the soul sees, and much more that comes with it; not blindly, nakedly and without savor, as with a scholar who sees him by his learning, only through the power of naked reason, but he sees him through an understanding which is strengthened and illuminated by the gift of the Holy Spirit, . . . more clearly and more fully than it may be written or told.’23 ‘Mystic’ experience (not a word used in this sense until the modern period) is the highest step of contemplation, a state, often brief, sometimes prolonged, in which the contemplative experiences the presence of God ‘immediately’, that is both in the present moment and without mediation. Such experiences are essentially ineffable and beyond rational analysis, and writers use a variety of metaphors when describing their encounter with God, but mostly their language is sensory.24 Felip Ribot (d.1391) writes in a text originally prepared for Carmelite friars but made available in the vernacular in the fifteenth century: ‘Than schalt þou be plentevows with delitys vnabyl to be gyssyd vpon almyghty God, and þou schalt lyftyn vp to beheldyn frely the face of thy sowle vnto God.’25 Anchorites, among whom we find both men and women, both lay people and professed religious, were encouraged to spend time in meditation. In c.1160–2 Aelred (1110–1167) wrote De Institutione Inclusarum, for his sister, an anchoress who was probably a Benedictine nun.26 He discusses the inner and outer life of the anchoress. The section on the inner life describes the preparation of the heart through a way of life that includes reading as well as prayers, vigils and fasting. Aelred commends a threefold meditative technique, focusing on things past, things present and things to come. The anchoress is to imagine herself actively involved in the events of the gospel story, for example, imagining herself present in Mary’s chamber at the Annunciation, following her as she visits Elizabeth or travels to Bethlehem. She is encouraged to weep with Mary when the twelve-year-old Jesus becomes separated from his parents in Jerusalem and to beg some little gift from the crumbs at the table at the Last 23 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. by John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward (Marwah,

NJ, 1991), p. 259. The only edition of the Middle English text so far is Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, 2000). 24 For a study of mysticism and contemplative writing in England in the late Middle Ages, see Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993). Note Glasscoe’s account of mystical experience, pp. 1, 3–6. See also Simon Tugwell, Ways of Imperfection (London, 1984), pp. 93–124. 25 The Institution of the First Monks, London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 192, fol. 56r. The status of this text cannot be established with certainty. Ribot claims that the author is John, 44th Bishop of Jerusalem, that it was written in c.412 and that he is only editing it. This cannot be true, but it is not clear whether Ribot himself was the author or whether he really is editing an earlier work. The text is edited by Paul Chandler, ‘The Liber de institucione et peculiaribus gestis religiosorum Carmelitarum in lege veteri et in nove perseverancium ad Caprasium Monachum’, unpublished doctoral dissertation (University of Toronto, 1991). The text quoted is the English translation by Thomas Scrope. An edition of this text by Valerie Edden is to be published by Middle English Texts. 26 For the text, see: Aelred of Rievaulx, De Institutione Inclusarum, ed. H. Talbot, Aelredi Rievallensis Opera Omnia, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis I (Turnholt, 1971), pp. 637–82. For the view that Aelred’s sister was a nun, see Alexandra Barratt ‘Small Latin? The Post-Conquest Learning of English Religious Women’, in Anglo-Latin and Its Heritage, ed. Sian Echard and Gernot R. Wieland (Turnholt, 2001), p. 53.

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Supper (Chapter 31). Aelred’s text was translated twice into Middle English27 and survives in manuscripts whose contents suggest that they were written for a lay audience. They provide an example of the general trend for texts written originally in Latin and intended originally for a clerical audience to be translated into the vernacular and to circulate among the laity.28 Very few lay people had the leisure to dedicate themselves to a life of piety such as that of Dame Cicely or to spend long hours in meditation, but lay people clearly did use meditative material, since there are texts written specifically for a lay readership, and English translations of older meditative texts are found in manuscript miscellanies designed for the laity.29 Nicholas Love’s translation of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi, The Myrrour of the Blessed Life, a meditative exposition of the life of Christ, and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, a guide to contemplation, both written originally for professed religious, circulated widely in manuscript and in print, and were owned by lay as well as religious.30 Hilton’s Epistle on the Mixed Life is written for a layman of means and considerable worldly responsibility who desires to take up a contemplative life; it cautions against leaving the world completely, encouraging him, as the title suggests, to balance his life between temporal affairs and contemplation.31 The Abbey of the Holy Ghost was written for a rather similar audience, those who wished to enter the religious life but were prevented by circumstances from so doing. It offers as an alternative to the religious life ‘the religion of the heart’, with its own ‘rule’ and guidance on cultivating the inner life. 32 We have considered so far two ways in which the spiritual lives of the laity were nurtured: firstly by the educational activities of parish clergy and friars, secondly by the provision of religious texts. There were other factors that influenced the religious life of the laity, as increasingly they took responsibility for their own inner lives. Much of this activity was totally orthodox and took place within the parish. Fraternities (or ‘guilds’),33 originally attached to monasteries, were parish societies. By the twelfth century their membership was drawn mainly from the laity, and their activities had extended well beyond their original purpose as a

27 John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, eds, Aielred of Rievaulx’s De Insitutione Inclusarum: Two English

Translations, EETS OS 287 (Oxford, 1984). 28 For a more sophisticated account of the transmission of meditative and religious practices than it is

29

30 31 32

33

possible to give here, see Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia, 1996), ch. 1. Devotional miscellanies have been the subject of a number of recent studies. The best starting point is Vincent Gillespie, ‘Lukynge in haly bukes: Lectio in some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies’, Analecta Cartusiana 106 (1984), pp. 1–27. Erler, ‘Devotional Literature’, pp. 516–18. Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole . . . and his Followers , ed. C. Horstmann, I (London, 1895), pp. 264–92. Middle English Religious Prose, ed. Norman Blake (London, 1972), pp. 88–102. It was translated from a French original c.1350–70. For a modern edition of this work, see Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life Edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472 , ed. S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson (Salzburg, 1986); and, for fuller comment, the essay by Bestul in this volume. Parish guilds are not to be confused with craft guilds or ‘mysteries’, which confined their membership to those practising a particular craft or trade.

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means of securing prayers for the dead, though those who paid to join continued to do so in the expectation that their souls would be prayed for in perpetuity. They set up almshouses and hospitals, paid for the funerals of poorer members, contributed to parish and diocesan funds and had responsibilities within the parish, for example for maintaining the graveyard wall and providing church furniture. They provided the sacred vessels and services, and it is just possible that, by the end of the period, some guilds may have owned books for members’ use.34 Each guild was dedicated to a particular saint or object of devotion, and feasts and processions were arranged to honour the patron saint. It was burgesses not the gentry who were active members of these fraternities;35 women as well as men were permitted to join, though not the poorest members of the community. Fraternities were found in almost every town; there were 150 in London. As so often, secular and religious functions were combined and the distinction between them fudged. The charitable works of the guilds were ‘the works of mercy’ enjoined in Matthew 25: 35–8,36 and guilds clearly influenced the devotional life of the parish, promoting the veneration of particular saints, for example. They also created an identity for those who belonged (members wore a distinctive livery), fostered a sense of community and operated as a sort of mutual benefit society.37 While it was no doubt possible for tension to arise between fraternities and parish clergy, fraternities were officially fully inside the institution of the Church. Other lay groups were informal and some operated pretty well independently of the institution. In recent years, much attention has been paid to the role of women in spreading devotional practices.38 It was women to whom the elementary education of children was entrusted. They taught the children of the household to read, taught them their prayers and were responsible for the provision of suitable books for the household. The vast number of service-books owned by women suggests that they provided the books for use in domestic chapels in addition to owning service-books for their own private use. Many manuscripts 34 The Parish Church of Pott Shrigley in Cheshire had a small lending library; see Colin Richmond, ‘The

35 36

37

38

English Gentry and Religion, c. 1500’, in Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers in Late Medi eval England: Proceedings of the Conference held at Strawberry Hill, Easter 1989 , ed. C. Harper-Bill (Woodbridge, 1989), p. 125 and R. N. Swanson, ‘ A Small Library for Pastoral Care and Spiritual Instruction in Late Medieval England’, Journal of the Early Book Society 5 (2002), pp. 99–120. Evidence for parish libraries is difficult to assess; it is possible that the public library known to have been in Leicester Guildhall in c.1586 was founded in the previous century; see Valerie Edden, The Index of Middle English Prose, Handlist XV (Cambridge, 2000), p. xiv. Richmond, ‘The English Gentry and Religion’, pp. 137–8. The Seven Works of Mercy became a popular subject for church painting in the later fifteenth century; see for example the parish church of Moulton St Mary in Norfolk. I owe this reference to David Griffith. For fraternities, see G. Rosser, ‘Communities of Parish and Guild in the Late Middle Ages’, in Parish, Church and People, ed. S. J. Wright (London, 1988), pp. 29–55 and Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, pp. 142–54. For a detailed study of East Anglian guilds, see Ken Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia, c.1470–1550 (York, 2001); and, of Suffolk guilds, Judith Middleton-Stewart, Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370–1547 (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 147–56. See, for example, Susan Groag Bell, ‘Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture’, in Women and Power, ed. M. Erler and M. Kowalski (Athens, OH, 1988), pp. 149–187 and A. M. Hutchinson, ‘Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the late Medieval Household’, De Cella in Seculum, pp. 215–27.

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contain a portrait of St Anne instructing her daughter the Virgin in her letters, thus offering a sacred model of maternal duty.39 Mary too is frequently portrayed with a book, particularly in representations of the Annunciation. In these the book had its origins in the belief that Jesus was the Word of God, but was clearly reinterpreted to present Mary as a late-medieval gentlewoman, occupied in devotional reading. These images reflect not only the educational role of the late-medieval woman but also the importance of the mother–child relationship in passing on religious belief and devotional practices. Evidence from wills tells us how time and time again religious books were passed from mother to daughter or niece.40 Piety as well as book-culture was fostered within families and households. We may consider the case of Anne Stafford (d.1472), daughter and heiress of Thomas of Woodstock (d.1397), and Eleanor de Bohun, both famous as book owners and patrons of literature. Eleanor’s will includes the bequest of books, distributed with some care to her children; to her son Humphrey she bequeathed secular texts and a richly illuminated Psalter, which had belonged to her father; to her daughter Isabella, a minoress, she left a Bible and devotional texts. To Anne she bequeathed a copy of the Golden Legend (a collection of saints’ lives) in French and her primer, ‘which book I have often used’.41 Like her mother, Anne collected books, especially devotional books, and commissioned religious texts. Lydgate’s Invocation to St Anne was written ‘at the commaundement of my Ladie Anne Countasse of Stafford’.42 Anne was the saint after whom she had been named. Her cult grew strong in the late Middle Ages, particularly in England, fuelled both by the marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia (Pope Urban VI had ordered that her feast be kept in England to popularise the marriage) and by the need of laywomen for a saint who was famed for being both married and a mother. Anne’s daughter, Anne Mortimer, commissioned Lydgate to write the Legend of St Margaret;43 St Margaret was the saint especially invoked by women during childbirth. Her daughter-in-law, Isabel Bourchier, who married her son Henry, earl of Essex in 1426, also owned and commissioned books, commissioning a life of Mary Magdalene from another East Anglian author, Osbern Bokenham.44 Many gentlewomen were also part of somewhat larger networks of women, lay and religious, who gave and lent books to each other and who gathered together to hear books read and who had opportunity to discuss their reading: 39 Wendy Scase, ‘St Anne and the Education of the Virgin: Literary and Artistic Traditions and their

Implications’, in Rogers, England in the Fourteenth Century , pp. 81–96. 40 Testamentary evidence for book ownership and readership is not as easy to interpret as it may at first

41

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appear; see Anne M. Dutton, ‘Passing the Book: Testamentary Transmission of Religious Literature to and by Women in England 1350–1500’, in Women, the Book and the Godly, ed. Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 41–54. See Carol Meale, ‘ “ . . . Alle the Bokes that I Haue of Latyn, Englische, and Frensche”: Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England’, in Women and Literature in Britain 1150–1500 , ed. Carol Meale (Cambridge, 1993), p. 151. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate , ed. H. McCracken, EETS ES 107 (Oxford, 1911), pp. 154–5. Walter F. Schirmer, John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century (London, 1961), p. 130. Osbern Bokenham, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Mary S. Serjeantson, EETS OS 206 (Oxford, 1938), p. 137. The lives were written between 1443 and 1447, but it is not possible to date individual lives precisely.

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what Felicity Riddy has called female ‘textual communities’.45 It is easy enough to contrast the devotional life of the nun, sharing her religious life with other women in her community, and the lay gentlewoman, saying her prayers and reading devotional books in private, but as our opening example of Cicely of York revealed, it is wrong to draw too sharp a distinction. Lay and religious women were in frequent contact with each other; there were ties of family that led to gifts and bequests of books; some lay women were vowesses, widows who took vows to live a chaste and prayerful life but were free to live in a female religious house or to remain in their own homes. There were many opportunities for contact between highborn women and their local female religious houses. Religious communities and lay households both had the service of a chaplain, whose duties included recommending and indeed reading books to them. We may remember that Margery Kempe, who was neither aristocratic nor lettered, was much influenced in her thinking and models of female sanctity by books introduced to her by her chaplain, which he presumably read to her.46 We may be misled by our own modern practice of solitary, private reading; ‘reading’ in the Middle Ages was largely an aural experience and a communal activity, and one could have a lively involvement with books (secular as well as religious) without the necessity of being lit erate.47 The religious life so far considered was by and large nurtured and guided by the clergy, though both groups and individuals had some freedom to develop their own spiritual lives. In the late Middle Ages there was an increasing number of groups functioning outside the institutional church, some of which fell foul of ecclesiastical authorities. The female ‘textual communities’ found within aristocratic and gentry families were entirely orthodox, but in East Anglia at least there were communities of women who had taken no formal religious vows, were obedient to no monastic rule and who were neither regulated nor recognised by the ecclesiastical authorities. They left behind tantalisingly little information and it is impossible to characterise their beliefs or their religious practices. 48 Lollardy was a spirituality of a different kind.49 Its origins were in the teachings of the Oxford scholar, John Wyclif (c.1330–1384). Its first supporters were drawn from the aristocracy, though it soon spread downwards through the social classes. Groups of Lollards were to be found in many large towns, where their beliefs and religious practices were spread through preaching and through ‘schools’ in which women as well as men met in private houses to discuss the Bible and Lollard doctrines, using the vernacular and sharing books.50 It 45 Felicity Riddy, ‘Women Talking about the Things of God: A Late Medieval Subculture’, in Meale,

Women and Literature , pp. 104–27. 46 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004), pp. 280–1. 47 See Joyce Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France

(Cambridge, 1966), and Satoko Tokunaga, ‘Assessing Book Use by Women in Late Medieval England’, Journal of the Early Book Society 5 (2002), pp. 172–5. 48 Roberta Gilchrist and Marilyn Oliva, Religious Women in Medieval East Anglia (Norwich, 1993), pp. 72–4. 49 There is a considerable scholarly output on Lollardy. The best starting point is Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988). 50 Ibid., pp. 180–4.

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encouraged a life of personal study and devotion, which maybe could have been contained within the life of the parish but in fact led to suspicion and finally condemnation by the Church authorities. It flourished on the margins of Church life, finding God outside the sacramental life and worship of the parish. In the eyes of the Church authorities there was a clear link between the spread of literacy, the availability of the Bible in English and the spread of heretical beliefs: book-learning is undoubtedly a dangerous thing! With the Lollards’ stress on the supremacy of the Scriptures (read without scholarly annotation), their rejection of priestly mediation, their belief that the eucharistic bread and wine remained just bread and wine, their condemnation of pilgrimages and of the veneration of the saints, it is easy to see why the ecclesiastical authorities condemned them as heretics. Lollardy promoted a spiritual life centred on the study of the Bible rather than the daily office, based on a new understanding of the role of the laity and a belief in the primacy of the individual conscience. How far there was continuity between these Lollard beliefs and the spread of Protestantism under Henry VIII is a matter of debate. It is important that the story I have told is not over-simplified. It is tempting to tell it as a chain of cause and effect leading to the Reformation, as a straightforward trajectory from a spirituality that was largely defined by and designed for clergy and those who had taken religious vows towards one in which there is a widespread lay involvement. It is instructive to compare the story of the changing role of the Bible in the late Middle Ages. It has been customary to tell that particular story as one in which the clerical monopoly on the Bible was effected by the authority given to the (Latin) Vulgate text, which meant that only those who knew Latin could read it and only those with access to the learned commentaries of the Church Fathers were entitled to interpret it. This monopoly was then, the story goes, dramatically and heroically challenged by Wyclif and his followers, with their literal translations into the vernacular and their unglossed texts.51 However, this takes no account of the explosion of all vernacular writing in the late Middle Ages; it is difficult to think of any kind of writing that is not significantly more widely available in the late fourteenth century than in the thirteenth. Also, as James Morey has demonstrated clearly, lay people did have access to the Bible in many forms well before the time of Wyclif.52 Vernacular translations of the Psalms were available from AngloSaxon times onwards and their use was encouraged. The vast increase of written evidence for the devotional life of the laity from the second half of the fourteenth century is primarily a testimony to the rise of lay literacy in the period; it does not necessarily attest a rise in lay devotion itself. To assess lay spirituality in, say, the twelfth century, would involve considering different evidence, such as that from material culture and records of almsgiving. What is clear is that, as lay literacy increased, the devotional life of the laity became more bookcentred. 51 Text of the Bible normally included interpretative commentary taken from approved authorities. For

an account of the Wycliffite debate about the Bible, see Kantik Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge, 2002). 52 See James H. Morey, Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature (Urbana, 2000).

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Similarly one must not over-emphasise the private and individual nature of late medieval devotion. Lay religion was predominantly a communal experience, whether it was experienced in parish life or through the fraternities or through the devotional practices of gentry households. As Eamon Duffy has demonstrated, in rural parishes religion remained traditional, conservative, sacerdotal and orthodox until well into the sixteenth century.53 It was in the urban areas (largely ignored by Duffy) that new attitudes were forged, which challenged these practices. Lollardy undoubtedly spread through communal activity in towns: the schools and conventicles so condemned by their opponents. Its challenge lay not in promoting private prayer or other private devotional practices but at a more fundamental level – in its theology. The centrality it gave to the Bible rather than to ‘tradition’ (that is, the accumulated teaching of the Church) and the belief that God enabled ‘symple men out of [i.e. outside] the vniuersitee’ to understand it, moved inexorably towards a revaluation of the status of the individual lay person as of the authority of the Catholic Church.54 And that leads to a different story. . . . Mystics and anchorites lived apart from the world, in many ways cut off from the communities around them. They may properly be considered as part of an ancient eremitic tradition (see the essay in this volume by E. A. Jones). Nonetheless the particular anchorites and mystics with which this book is concerned are to be understood not only in relation to this tradition but also as responding to their local context: the spiritual life of the Christian communities into which they were born.

53 Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven

& London, 2001), and Stripping of the Altars. 54 Hudson, The Premature Reformation , pp. 508–17.

4 Medieval Contemplation and Mystical Experience SANTHA BHATTACHARJI

T

HE medieval use of the word ‘contemplation’ covers a range of different approaches to spirituality, not all of them well assorted, at least at first glance. This essay will attempt to give a brief outline of these different approaches and the issues they raise, particularly those issues that tend to cause difficulty to modern readers of medieval mystical texts. At the same time, by taking a chronological approach to the development of these different strands, this essay will attempt to draw them into some kind of serviceable overview. The word ‘contemplation’ provides a useful way into this complex field, as it is the medieval writers’ own preferred term: our modern term ‘mysticism’ is not one they use to describe their endeavours or their experience, although, of course, they use the adjective mysticus to describe the ‘hidden’ or ‘spiritual’ meaning of Scripture.1 I propose briefly to trace the word ‘contemplation’ back to its Greek and Latin roots, following the lead of the magisterial Dictionnaire de Spiritualité,2 as this leads us straight into the first difficulty encountered by modern readers: the emphasis on withdrawal, not only from the ‘world’, with all that the term implies, but also from the love of all ‘creatures’, including the nearest and dearest human beings. 3 Both the Latin contemplatio and the Greek word theoria, which it translates, have as their root syllable te ‘see, sight’. Thus the ‘temples’ of the head were thought to be the seat of vision, and a ‘temple’ was a place of vision – at first, not so much a building as a sacred space from which to study omens, such as the weather and the flight of birds. Thus ‘vision’ is associated from the outset with scrutinising the heavens. Indeed, the long tradition of Greek philosophy, which was to issue in the great edifice of Platonism and neo-Platonism, began with astronomers also scrutinising the heavens – thus the verb theorein implies not only ‘to see’, but also ‘watch’, ‘inspect’; that is, an intentional and focused kind of seeing. Similarly, the early mathematicians used their theoria to produce ‘theorems’; that is, from particular examples they formulated a universal prin-

1 2 3

Bernard McGinn, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism , vol. II: The Growth of Mysticism (London, 1995), pp. 373–4. Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, vol. 2 (2), ‘Contemplation’, cols 1643–2193, particularly René Arnou, ‘Contemplation chez les anciens philosophes du monde greco-romain’. For example, see Richard Rolle, Emendatio Vitae, ed. N. Watson, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 21 (Toronto, 1995), ch. 2: ‘De contemptu mundi’, p. 38.

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ciple of relatedness between particular phenomena.4 It is these underlying universal principles that then become the proper object of contemplation, and the material phenomena that provided the starting-point are seen as veils that need to be pierced. They are the object of the ‘contemplation of the senses’, beyond which one must move to the ‘contemplation of the mind’. Indeed in Platonism (in Plato’s Republic, for instance) the senses come to be seen as giving information that is positively misleading, and thus they in a sense war against the mind.5 This focused use of the mind gives rise to the Platonic insistence on the clearing away of all distractions, involving withdrawal into a simple but stable life, marked by lack of the turbulence caused by ambition, vainglory, romantic love, sexual passion, or anxiety about children or other responsibilities.6 The Old Testament tradition, whereby the Creator might disclose himself precisely through the turbulence of passionate involvement in the affairs of men, is nowhere to be seen. Here is no Moses killing an Egyptian out of indignation at the mistreatment of a Jew (Exodus 1: 11–12), and in his subsequent exile encountering God, who reveals himself in the burning bush with the words, ‘I have seen the oppression of my people’ (Exodus 3: 2–7). Still less is it Hannah crying to God with such rage and bitterness over her childlessness that the priest in the temple thinks she is drunk (1 Samuel 1: 9–17). Equally disregarded, it seems, is the New Testament emphasis, seen in parables such as that of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 30–7) and that of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25: 31–46), on the most direct path to salvation as lying through the simplest act of service to one’s neighbour. Instead, the Platonic tradition bequeaths to Christian mysticism its emphasis on the primacy of ‘contemplation’, involving a preparation not just of the mind, but of the whole inner man, to receive a disclosure from God that is experienced almost purely internally, in the mind and spirit. Platonism was not only a formative influence on Christian mysticism in the early centuries of the Church,7 helping to privilege the eremitical and monastic forms of life, but freshly came back into play in the West as thirteenth-century Platonism, a reaction to the then current interest in Aristotelianism.8 We see the effects of this later form of Platonism in one of the key works of the Franciscan St Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Journey of the Mind into God).9 In the first four Books of this work, he replicates the movement of thought mapped out above. First, he argues that the natural world contains the footprints of the divine, and therefore the contemplation of the senses is the first stage in the ascent to God. Then, God is by his own nature available to the contempla-

4 5 6 7 8 9

E.g., the Ionians and Pythagoreans. See Frank Copplestone, A History of Philosophy, vol. 1 (Westminster, MD, 1946; repr. Garden City, NY, 1985), pp. 20–1, 32–7. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, eds, The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Princeton, 1961), The Republic, VI, 509d–VII, 518c, pp. 745–51. Ibid., Republic, VI, 496b–e, p. 732; VI, 500c, p. 735. Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (Oxford, 1981), pp. 1–17. Copplestone, History of Philosophy, II, pp. 259–65, 279–80, 423–41. Opera Omnia Sancti Bonaventurae, ed. PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura, vol. 5 (Quaracchi, 1891), pp. 293–316.

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tion of the human mind, the Trinity being reflected in the threefold inner structure of man as memory, intellect and will. But the obviousness of God’s power and presence in and through the material world and man’s mind is obscured for us by the Fall of humanity and original sin, and so contemplation needs to be aided by divine grace.10 This is the big disjunction between the classical inheritance and Christian medieval thought: it is not the material world and the senses that are a problem as such, but they become a problem through man’s fallen nature, which includes the fallen nature of the mind itself. Therefore, a crucial moral dimension enters the search for the vision of God: it is not a question of subduing the flesh to free the mind, but rather the whole man, both body and mind, needs to repent and be converted. Nonetheless, by the late Middle Ages, the understanding of the term ‘contemplation’ seems to have become strongly intellectualised, so that no clear distinction is made between, say, the prayerful meditation of the monk, slowly reading Scripture over to himself in a low voice,11 and the academic study of the texts going on in the recently founded schools and universities.12 This provokes in turn an anti-intellectual reaction. Among the intellectuals themselves, one finds a corrective in the apophatic tradition, going back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in the late fifth century: the mind can only go so far; ultimately God is beyond every formulation, and can in no way be ‘grasped’ by the mind.13 On the Continent, key exponents of this tradition, such as Meister Eckhart, are themselves university teachers and appear to see no conflict between their profession and a mysticism that moves beyond all thought.14 In England, however, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing seems to draw ‘knowing’ and ‘unknowing’ into a sharper opposition, as we see in his frequent injunctions against ‘curiouste of witte’.15 But as soon as any contemplative seeks to make a spiritual path available outside these academic confines, they find themselves resorting to very different approaches. I would list these under three headings: appealing to human emotions; using the visual imagination; and emphasising physicality, both in terms of physical practices such as fasting or pilgrimage, and in terms of mapping out the spiritual path as a succession of physical phenomena. It is these three major approaches that we find in most vernacular mystical writings from this period, as well as in Latin writings, like Rolle’s, not directly intended for an academic audience.

10 Bonaventure, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, p. 306. 11 See B. Ward, trans., The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth,

1973), Introduction, pp. 43–6. 12 McGinn, History of Mysticism, II, pp. 368–72. 13 Dionysius the Areopagite, Opera, in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Graeca 3 (Paris, 1857). See also

Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works , trans. C. Liubheid and P. Rorem, Classics of Western Spirituality (London, 1987). 14 Alois Maria Haas, ‘Schools of Late Medieval Mysticism’, in Jill Rait, ed., Christian Spirituality, vol. 2 (New York, 1987), pp. 140–75, at pp. 145–50. 15 P. Hodgson, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling, EETS 218 (London, rev. edn 1958), pp. 4, 22, 23, 73, 98.

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All these three strands can be problematic in themselves for modern readers. In addition, in the Middle Ages they interact among themselves, sometimes reinforcing one another in a way that renders their expression more extreme, and sometimes acting as correctives to one another. To map out a necessarily simplified line of development for these different strands, let us begin with the Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm (c.1033–1109), one of the first major texts of ‘affective’ piety in the Western tradition.16 The difficulty here is twofold. First, there is the manipulative nature of the writing, in that it is specifically designed to stir up (‘ad excitandam legentis mentem’) certain named feelings in the reader, as Anselm’s Prologue carefully explains.17 Secondly, there is the nature of those feelings themselves, namely intense fear of the judgement of God and deep contrition for sin. A sense of unworthiness does not, on the whole, resonate with a modern-day culture of self-esteem and self-confidence. Consequently, the logic of Anselm’s magnificent sequence of thought at the end of Meditation I, in which he invokes the meaning of the name Jesus (‘God is salvation’) to escape from the judgement of God,18 is not easily grasped, nor is the entire medieval devotion to the Name of Jesus, which this passage helps to launch, unless an understanding of the effect of the Fall on human intimacy with God is in place first. This raises the whole issue of the relationship of mystical experience to a particular framework of doctrine. At the present time, modern readers seem very open to the idea that every human being has a spiritual life in some form or other, but the idea that a body of thought as specific and apparently rigid as doctrine has any bearing on spirituality is problematic. Often, there is an assumption that spirituality is a way to ignore doctrine. However, the main difficulty is the first one, that of the manipulation of the emotions. At least in Anselm, this is stated clearly in the Prologue as being the very purpose of this type of writing. Nonetheless, knowingly and deliberately stirring up specific feelings in oneself can seem to be using one’s own psyche in a rather calculating way, and this can lead into wide-ranging discussions of the nature of the medieval sense of self: is there a part of the self that defines itself over against its thoughts and emotions? Does this underlie the kind of programme we find in Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, where the ‘image of sin’ in oneself is dismantled in Book I, and the ‘image of Christ’ is rebuilt in Book II?19 More problematic, however, is the element of coercing certain responses in the reader, which we find in many devotional texts, and which take the whole process of stirring up feelings possibly a step further than Anselm intended. Many ‘Passion Lyrics’, for instance, having vividly detailed Christ’s sufferings on the cross, conclude with a piece of pathos, bordering on emotional blackmail, such as this:

16 S. Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1946),

pp. 3–91. 17 Ibid., p. 3. 18 Ibid., pp. 78–9. For an English translation, see Ward, Prayers and Meditations, p. 89. 19 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, trans. P. H. Clark and R. Dorward, Classics of Western Spiritu-

ality (Mahwah, NJ, 1991), I, particularly chs 52–55, pp. 123–6; II, chs 1–4, pp. 193–9.

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Gef þei weren kende to loven me ouþ, Of al my peine me ne rouþ.20 (If they were naturally disposed to love me at all, I would have no regret for all my pain.)

More alarmingly, Ancrene Wisse slowly and carefully builds up a beguiling picture of Christ as lover-knight, riding to the rescue of the soul, who is depicted as an impoverished lady besieged in her castle, on whom he then bestows all his lands and wealth, only to continue: And
if þu ert so swuþe onwil . . . þet tu . . . uorsakest swuch bi
eate . . . lo! Ich hold her hetel sweord ouer thin heaued, uor to dealen lif and soule, and to bisenchen bo two into the fur of hell.21 (And if you are so obstinate . . . that you . . . refuse such benefits, behold! I hold her a cruel sword over your head, to separate living body from soul, and to plunge them both into the f ire of hell.)

Such a nakedly coercive demand for love is often repellent to a modern audience. Looking more broadly at the issue of affectivity, one can bring in here two motifs of medieval mystical writing: the spousal imagery, seen most strongly in Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, particularly Sermon 20,22 and the image of Christ as mother, found most notably in Julian of Norwich, but by no means confined to her. For example, it is found in Anselm’s ‘Prayer to St Paul’: Sed et tu, Iesu, bone domine, none et tu mater? An non est mater, qui tamquam gallina congregat sub alas pullos suos?23 (But are not you, Jesus, good master, are you not also a mother? Is he not a mother, who, like a hen, gathers her chickens under her wings?

The prayer goes on to consider Christ as a woman in labour. Both this and the hen are of course scriptural images for Christ. The motherhood of Christ is also found in several medieval lyrics,24 as well as in Julian’s near-contemporary, the Monk of Farne.25 What these two motifs have in common is that they are taking two widely recognised areas of human experience and emotion, and using them to help men and women to develop similar feelings towards an invisible and non-physical God. This affectivity once established, it seems a fairly logical next step to press the visual imagination into service in the process of stirring up emotions. This is 20 Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the 14th Century, 2nd edn, rev. G. V. Smithers (Oxford, 21 22 23 24 25

1952), no. 67, p. 85. The Ancren Riwle, ed. J. Morton (London, 1853), Part 7, p. 400. J.-P. Migne, ed., PL, 183: 867–72. Schmitt, ed., S. Anselmi Opera, III, 40. E.g., Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics, no. 48: stanza 4, p. 62. Hugh Farmer, ed., ‘The Meditations of the Monk of Farne’, Studia Anselmia 41: Analecta Monastica, series iv (Rome, 1957), pp. 141–245, at pp. 182–90; A Benedictine of Stanbrook, trans., The Monk of Farne (London, 1961), pp. 64–73.

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where sequences of carefully depicted scenes from the life of Christ come into play, such as those found in the anonymous Meditationes Vitae Christi,26 attributed in the Middle Ages to St Bonaventure, in the Liber Celestis of St Bridget of Sweden (1303–73),27 and in The Book of Margery Kempe,28 where similarly envisaged scenes from the life of the Virgin form an envelope around the sequence of pictures from the life of Christ. This use of the visual imagination develops empathy for the sufferings of both Christ and the Virgin, and reinforces the role of the emotions in relating to God. Here, the problem does not lie with somewhat alien emphases like the fear of judgement and the sense of sin, but with the almost unrelenting depiction of human pain, both physical and psychological. In this connection it can be useful to look at the historical context, particularly at the Black Death and subsequent recurrences of the plague, to remind ourselves of how much grief, horror and loss many medieval people did have to confront in the course of their lives. Similarly, the twentieth century has had to develop philosophies and spiritualities to accommodate the Holocaust, but in our more secular age these have perhaps been expressed primarily through the secular arts. However, if modern readers can move beyond their recoil at the gore and sadism in the depictions of the sufferings of Christ, they encounter a slightly unexpected aspect of this use of the visual imagination. One might expect that manuals such as the Meditationes Vitae Christi, which build up each scene in the life of Christ detail by detail, would be particularly prescriptive. In fact, this is not so. First of all, there is a clear understanding that we do not know how these scenes actually took place; we are simply imagining them in ways that help to arouse our sympathy now. The key scene in the Meditationes, the Crucifixion, even offers two different ways of visualising the mechanism of fixing Christ to the cross, with the admonition to choose whichever most pleases (‘magis placet’) the mind.29 Related to this lack of prescriptiveness is the understanding that each visualised scene, once set in motion, will probably unfold in a way that is personally appropriate to the meditator. For example, Margery Kempe, visualising the death of the Virgin, sees herself bawling so loudly that the disciples turn round and tell her to be quiet.30 More intriguingly, even initiating the entire exercise is not really seen as being under her control. Hilton, who implies that this capacity to use the visual imagination is a spiritual gift that is granted us at a certain point along the spiritual path, supports her in this: ‘A person does not always have this meditation when he would, but when our Lord wants to give it.’31 I would argue that, consequently, it is difficult to posit a definite boundary between these visualisations, themselves experienced as a gift, and actual ‘visions’, experienced as unexpected and unsought supernatural phenomena. Each of the relevant revelations in St Bridget’s Liber Celestis, for example, pres26 27 28 29 30 31

Meditationes Vitae Christi, ed. Sr M. Jordan Stallings (Washington, D.C., 1965). Roger Ellis, ed., The Liber Celestis of St Bridget of Sweden, EETS 291 (Oxford, 1987). Barry Windeatt, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004). Stallings, Meditationes, pp. 111–13. The Book of Margery Kempe, ch. 73, p. 323. Hilton, Scale of Perfection, I, ch. 36, p. 107.

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ents itself as a supernaturally received vision – as indeed do all the revelations in the Liber – but follows a fairly orderly progression through the life of Christ, to such an extent that it is difficult to separate it, generically, from the Meditationes. In contrast, Julian of Norwich’s visions, though ostensibly sixteen in number, could rather be called different insights all arising from a single beholding of Christ on the cross. Moreover, the depiction and words of the Crucified in her work, while arising from within the general matrix of medieval meditation, can be shown to have a profound originality. Similarly, Margery Kempe’s first healing vision – of Christ seated on the edge of her bed in a purple robe – has an unexpected and spontaneous quality, as well as being simple and brief. However, nearly all her other ‘visions’ follow a well-worn meditative pattern. Thus, while in some cases we must indeed confront the perhaps uncomfortable issue of supernatural phenomena when talking of medieval mysticism, it is possible that the large number of visionaries to be found in the late Middle Ages is in some sense culturally determined, precisely by the methods of ‘contemplation’ that we are here exploring. This brings us on to my third heading, the role of the physical in medieval mysticism. Rolle, as one of the most stridently anti-intellectual mystics, is perhaps not surprisingly one of the most notable exponents of the spiritual path in terms of a succession of paranormal experiences. The positive side of this emphasis is that he presents the spiritual journey as a thrilling adventure, which he relates in a tone of wide-eyed wonder: Admirabar magis quam enuncio quando siquidem sentiui cor meum incalescere, et uere non imaginarie, quasi sensibile igne estuare. Eram equidem attonitus quemadmodum eruperat ardour in animo: . . . sepius pectus meum si forte esset feruor ex aliqua exteriori causa palpitaui.32 (I was amazed, more than I can express, the first time I felt my heart begin to warm and burn, and that in reality and not in imagination, as though with a tangible fire. I was astonished at the way the heat sprang up in my spirit: . . . I kept feeling my chest to see if by chance the heat was from some external cause.)

Thus he begins his best-known work, Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love), and he goes on to relate how, nine months after this first experience, he hears heavenly music.33 Both these experiences he interprets as key liminal moments, at which he crossed important thresholds in his spiritual development. For Margery Kempe too, hearing heavenly music marks the actual moment of her conversion, fifteen years after she has been healed by Christ from a prolonged bout of madness after the birth of her first child.34 In addition, when she settles down to the fifteen years or so of solidly living out her contemplative life in Lynn, after her return from her major pilgrimages abroad to Jerusalem, Rome and Compostella, she describes her life in terms of similar paranormal

32 Margaret Deansley, ed., Incendium Amoris (London, 1915), Prologue, p. 145; cf. ch. 15, pp. 187–9. 33 Ibid., ch. 15, pp. 189–91. 34 Windeatt, ch. 3, p. 61.

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experiences: she has acute illness and headaches, sees trembling white flecks about her, and also experiences the fire in the chest described by Rolle.35 Obviously, we have to ask the question of whether this last experience at least is not conditioned by her familiarity with Rolle’s writings and those of other mystical writers whom she lists as having been read out to her by her parish priest.36 Margery, as an unlettered woman, is possibly an example of the kind of lay person whom the Church authorities most feared could be led down completely false paths by the incautious writings of others. She herself says that she is aware that sometimes she understood things literally that were meant spiritually, and vice versa.37 We get a taste of the controversy surrounding Richard Rolle in the Defense of Rolle by the hermit Thomas Basset.38 Rolle has obviously been accused of misleading the simple, and Basset’s riposte is that to confuse the simple, by causing them to question experiences that they have received humbly and gladly, is equally dangerous and can prevent people from whole-heartedly responding to their spiritual calling. However, what emerges from this debate is that Rolle’s attitude to his experiences was felt to be dangerously uncritical and simplistic. It is probable that both Hilton and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing are reacting in some of their writings against Rolle’s teachings. The Cloud-author, for example, warns specifically against pursuing the experience of physical heat: þei deserue . . . for to haue þeire brestes outher enflaumid with an unkyndely hete of compleccion, caused of misrewlyng of þeire bodies or of þis feinid worching, or elles þei conceyue a fals hete wrou
t by þe feende, þeire goostly enmye, caused of þeire pride & of þeire fleschlines & þeir coriouste of wit.39

The critique of undue emphasis on spiritual phenomena, along with a related critique of undue emphasis on spiritual techniques, contains an important message: that, in the last analysis, contemplation cannot be forced. Hilton, for example, has this to say about fasting, conceding its potential benefit but asserting its ultimate irrelevance: You must know that any man or woman who is to be spiritually occupied in meditation will be greatly hampered in spirit and hindered from the knowing and beholding of spiritual things (unless he has more grace) if he wilfully takes on some undue pain of hunger, or bodily sickness in the stomach, the head, or another part, for lack of good self-rule, through too much fasting, or in any other way. For though it may be that bodily pain . . . is at times no hindrance to the fervor of love to God in devotion, but often increases it; nevertheless, I consider that it hinders

35 36 37 38

Ibid., ch. 35, pp. 192–3. Ibid., ch. 17, p. 115; ch. 39, p. 204. Ibid., ch. 89, p. 384. The text can be found in: Michael Sargent, ‘Contemporary Criticism of Richard Rolle’, Analecta Cartusiana 55/1 (1981), pp. 160–205. 39 P. Hodgson, The Cloud of Unknowing, ch. 45, pp. 85–7; Hilton, Scale of Perfection, I, chs 10–11, pp. 83–5.

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the fervor of love in contemplation, which cannot be had soberly except in great rest of body and soul. 40

Despite the advice offered to those who would pursue the contemplative path, contemplation remains an almost incommunicable experience, which cannot be replicated at will, but is a pure gift, belonging firmly in the realms of mystery. For modern readers, however, the very process of wrestling with often alien and conflicting concepts can provide a unique way into the aspirations and debates that lie at the heart of medieval spirituality.

40 Hilton, Scale of Perfection, I, ch. 75, p. 148.

Part II Approaches to Scholarship

5 Richard Rolle DENIS RENEVEY

Introduction

T

HANKS to the work of Horstmann in the last years of the nineteenth century,1 followed by the groundbreaking and monumental scholarship on Rolle’s corpus by Allen,2 Richard Rolle stood as the better known and most influential of a group of authors of religious prose labelled as the Middle English mystics, which also included Walter Hilton, the Cloud-author, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe.3 In addition, Chambers, in his influential piece on the continuity of English prose from the time of King Alfred to Sir Thomas More,4 gave Rolle a prominent place in the history of English prose, far above Wycliffe. Rolle’s Middle English prose writings, although limited in number by comparison with his many major works in Latin, served nevertheless to demonstrate the use of the vernacular, in the dialect of Yorkshire, well before Chaucer turned English into a recognised and economically viable courtly literary language. Chambers’s project could not take into account Allen’s significant discoveries of the Rolle corpus, which made of him a Latin author of considerable scope, who used the medium of Middle English, so to say, only incidentally. In a sense, the small number of works on which Chambers argued for Rolle’s supreme place in the history of English prose made the claim look exaggeratedly inflated. From an altogether different perspective, a consideration of Rolle’s entire corpus made the label ‘mystical writer’ much too tight a fit, for his contributions in Latin cover broad religious topics, in the form of pastoral manuals, theological tracts, scriptural commentaries and autobiographical mystical pieces. No longer able to fit into the garb that historical linguists, literary and theological scholars have meticulously woven for him, and never regaining the popularity that was his in the fifteenth century, the most popular of the mystical writers has now lost ground as a canonical author to the

1 2 3 4

See Carl Horstmann, ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church, and his Followers, 2 vols (London, 1895–6). See Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for his Biography (New York, 1927). For a study of the Middle English mystics as a group, see David Knowles, The English Mystical Tradition, 2nd edn (London, 1964); see esp. pp. 48–66 on Rolle. See R. W. Chambers, Introduction to Nicholas Harpsfield: The Life and Death of Sir Thomas More , ed. E. V. Hitchcock and R. W. Chambers, EETS OS 186 (Oxford, 1932).

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frequently anthologised Revelation of Love of Julian of Norwich and The Book of Margery Kempe.5 Although the literary canonisation of those female literary figures is amply justified, I would like to contend in this essay that a proper appreciation of the impact of Rolle’s writings on late medieval religion in England (and on the Continent) illuminates our understanding of the religious culture in a unique way. For Rolle’s eclectic corpus imposes a consideration that moves beyond the nicely labelled category ‘mystic’. So, more directly, my question is: what do we gain in calling Richard Rolle a mystic? A non-partisan analysis of Rolle’s oeuvre serves to show the multiplicity of approaches and genres that were available to medieval religious authors, and, more importantly, that the ease with which he moved from one genre to another, translating, transposing and adapting his material and his sources according to the genre and the particular audience that each entailed, makes him the like of a Chaucer in the field of religious literature.6 No other Middle English religious author tackles such a variety of genres, albeit in a rather short literary career. No other Middle English author reached the level of popularity of Rolle, with more than five hundred manuscripts or early printed editions containing whole texts or extracts.7 In our own time, when immediate recognition of an artist seems to be of primordial importance, we can acknowledge that Rolle, whatever the impulses or the more rational strategies that supported his textual production, was doing something right. This essay is an attempt to understand Rolle’s success story by situating his opera in the broad category of Latin and vernacular theologies. I shall look at his contributions as commentator, liturgist and contemplative writer, in order to highlight the wide variety of literary and theological strategies adopted by Rolle to communicate his message about the spiritual life. This essay therefore opens new ways of studying and teaching Rolle.

Commentator Latin is the dominant language used by Rolle throughout his literary career. Out of the twenty-one pieces attributed to him, seventeen are written in Latin, with only The English Psalter, Ego dormio (I Sleep), The Commandment, The Form of Living, and some lyrical pieces, to attest to his input in the vernacular. Our desire to make Rolle a major vernacular religious author, one who, in addition, fathered the English medieval mystical tradition, has had the infelicitous effect

5 6

7

For a recent instance of such anthologising, see The Norton Anthology of English Literature , ed. H. M. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt, 7th edn (New York & London, 2000). This essay takes into consideration points recently developed by Watson, especially the following works: Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 13 (Cambridge, 1991); ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), pp. 822–64; ‘The Middle English Mystics’, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature , ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 539–65. See Watson, Richard Rolle, p. 31.

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of putting aside several of his Latin contributions.8 Rolle, writer of epistles addressed to women religious, has become a major figure for our understanding of the development of female mysticism and the kind of male patronage and guidance that they underwent. According to some critics, Rolle, known for his misogyny in some of his earlier Latin writings, came to recognise the value of the feminine and then began a career as spiritual adviser for women later in his life.9 Although one can contend with some aspects of this depiction, there is no denying that Rolle’s Middle English writings are an important testimony to the rise of female religious practice and reading in late-medieval England.10 However, articles and doctoral dissertations on Rolle still focus essentially on the Middle English material, a reflection of current academic trends, and attest to difficulties in gaining ready access to readable editions of Rolle’s Latin pieces, without, of course, considering the impenetrability of several of them. Despite that, Rolle is first and foremost a Latin author. His Latin writings can be organised generically, even though one needs to be wary of Rolle’s own idiosyncratic use of generic conventions. For instance, his use of the commentary genre serves multiple functions. His degree of deference to the traditional form of the commentary can be gauged by considering the extent to which the primary text remains the central object of his attention. In the case of his early scriptural commentaries ((?) Super Symbolum Athanasi, Super Symbolum Apostolorum, Super Orationem Dominicam, Super Apocalypsim, Super Threnos, Super Mulierem Fortem , Super Magnificat (On the Athanasian Creed, On the Apostles’ Creed, On the Lord’s Prayer, On the Apocalypse, On Lamentations, On ‘The Strong Woman’, On the Magnificat)), all very much modelled on the Glossa Ordinaria, Rolle fully endorses the role of the commentator, and passages from the Scriptures remain central.11 If viewed as the production of a formative moment in Rolle’s career where ‘. . . Rolle, as a young contemplative writer might naturally learn his trade by gaining experience in the unlocking of scriptural doors, beginning, cautiously, with the standard gloss as his guide’,12 these early works fail perhaps to highlight Rolle’s masterful versatility in shaping traditional genres to suit a multiplicity of purposes. For Rolle, although he had not completed his university studies at Oxford, may nevertheless have wished to establish his academic 8

Incendium Amoris, a mystical and autobiographical treatise, proves to be the exception, with a critical edition and a Penguin modern English translation. See Richard Rolle, Incendium Amoris, ed. Margaret Deanesly (Manchester, 1915); see also Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love, trans. Clifton Wolters, 3rd edn (London, 1988). 9 See Ann W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca & London, 1990), esp. pp. 104–18; see also by Astell, ‘Feminine Figurae in the Writings of Richard Rolle: A Register of Growth’, Mystics Quarterly 15 (1989), pp. 117–24; for a reassessment of this view, see Denis Renevey, Language, Self and Love: Hermeneutics in the Writings of Richard Rolle and the Commentaries of the Song of Songs (Cardiff, 2001), see esp. pp. 68–73. 10 For a study of late-medieval reading and book ownership, see Mary C. Lerner, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 46 (Cambridge, 2002). 11 For a translation of some of those commentaries, see Richard Rolle, Biblical Commentaries: Short Exposition of Psalm 20, Treatise on the Twentieth Psalm, Comment on the First Verses of the Canticle of Canticles, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. Robert Boenig, Salzburg Studies in English Literature, Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies 92/13 (Salzburg, 1984). 12 See Watson, Richard Rolle, p. 98.

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credentials by working within the genre of the scholastic commentary, and with no precise intention at that point of expounding a contemplative doctrine. There is assuredly an evolution in the writing career of Rolle, leading to the ‘more contemplative’ writings of his late period. However, rather than putting emphasis on this chronological thrust, it is perhaps time now to go back to his entire corpus and to consider each of Rolle’s contributions as a (Latin or vernacular) theology in its own right, without imposing aesthetic and/or spiritual value judgement upon his works by invoking explicit comparison with his later, more contemplative pieces.13 A close analysis of those early commentaries, in the light of the scholastic commentary tradition, may yield useful information about Rolle’s familiarity with the genre, his readiness to follow authorities, his development of a personal voice and his need to make that voice heard or not within that traditional literary setting. A similar approach has been used to understand better Rolle’s rapport with the Song of Songs and its commentary tradition.14 At this point in Rolle’s career, however, the commentary genre becomes a fertile ground for the writing of an altogether different theology. Again, one needs to turn one’s gaze beyond Rolle’s own corpus in order to understand how the sub-genre of the mystical commentary serves for the embedding of important autobiographical and spiritual information, and also how Rolle moves away from the style of the pointed perorations to the deity favoured by twelfth-century commentaries that had a clear bearing on his own works.15 While the tradition leaves important marks on Rolle’s own output, Super Canticum and Melos Amoris (On the Song of Songs and The Song of Love) figure a self both intent upon union with God, and trying to express its situatedness in relation to the practices of the church and the more general cultural context of the period.16 A historicising of his writings in the light of the broader theological and cultural horizons of the fourteenth century discloses the fact that his writings, far from being preciously kept in the hands of select and prospective mystics, enjoyed – considering medieval means of textual transmission – a quick circulation among the secular clergy, the laity and more specialised religious individuals.

13 I am suggesting here an approach that runs countercurrent to what Watson does in his monograph on

Rolle, where the new chronology that he is able to establish serves for the development of his thesis on the invention of authority. I am not denying the usefulness of such an approach, but I think that further research on Rolle needs now to map broader horizons. My own Language, Self and Love takes also into account a chronological and progressive movement upward to the more contemplative pieces, even though it effects a change from previous scholarship by setting Rolle within the exegetical tradition. 14 For more information on Rolle as commentator of the Song of Songs, see my Language, Self and Love. 15 See E. Ann Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, 1990); see also Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs, Cistercian Studies Series 156 (Kalamazoo, 1995). 16 For an edition of Super Canticum, see Elizabeth M. Murray, ed., ‘Richard Rolle’s Comment on the Canticles: Edited from MS. Trinity College, Dublin, 153’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis (Fordham University, 1958); see also Richard Rolle, Le Chant d’Amour (Melos Amoris), 2 vols, ed. François Vandenbroucke, Sources Chrétiennes 168–9 (Paris, 1971).

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Liturgist My brief case study here of Rolle’s Expositio Super Novem Lectiones Mortuorum, hereafter Expositio (Commentary on the Nine Lessons from the Office of the Dead) brings to light the difficulties inherent in a categorisation based on generic variety.17 The Expositio is written in the form of a commentary while, at the same time, it shows a broad concern for liturgical practice, in this case the Office of the Dead, and the broader cultural implications of that Office. Such a study shows how Rolle fed on new devotional trends, especially the rise in lay ownership of Books of Hours, which included the Office of the Dead as one of their central elements; it also witnesses to the privileged status of his solitary life, which gave him access to the distinctive social category of one dead to the world but still living in it: the position of the anchorites of late-medieval England.18 The Expositio is found extant in forty-four manuscripts, which make this piece one of the most copied of Rolle’s works, and the most popular of his exegetical pieces. There are also two manuscripts of large-scale excerpta, and three compilations of Rolle’s work that make extensive use of the Expositio. One of the central concerns of the Expositio is the theme of the contempt of the world (De Contemptu Mundi), which had been developed in the De Miseria Humanae Conditionis (On the Wretchedness of the Human Condition) of Innocent III, the Pseudo-Bernardine Meditationes Piissimae (Most Pious Meditations) and the Speculum Peccatoris (The Mirror of the Sinner), all of which serve as sources for the Expositio. 19 It is worthwhile noting here that Rolle and Chaucer share a common source in Innocent’s work, since Chaucer also translated the De Miseria, and made significant use of it for the writing of the Pardoner’s Tale and the Prologue to the Man of Law’s Tale. 20 Studies in the early ownership of the Expositio point to readers among the educated secular clergy, and, in particular, a York Cathedral group devoted to Rolle’s writings in general, and at the University of Oxford and major religious houses: the Brigittine foundation of Syon Abbey, the Charterhouses of London and Sheen.21 The Expositio throws some light on the manufacture of Rolle’s popularity as a religious writer. Indeed, death, the subject matter of this treatise, evidently had an immediate appeal to Christians in general. Its ownership by the secular clergy makes plausible its use as a pastoral manual. However, in addition to this ongoing interest, it is not impossible that Rolle acted as a bridge in transmitting aspects of anchoritic culture to the more general public by investing the liturgy of the Office of the Dead with a semantic load inherited from the use of that Office as part of the official ceremony of enclosure that anchorites had to 17 For an edition of this work, see Malcolm R. Moyes, Richard Rolle’s Expositio Super Novem Lectiones

Mortuorum, 2 vols, Analecta Cartusiana 92/12 (Salzburg, 1988). 18 This argument is developed in more detail in ‘Looking for a Context: Rolle. Anchoritic Culture, and

the Office of the Dead’ in Medieval Texts in Context, ed. Graham Caie and Denis Renevey (Routledge, forthcoming). 19 See Moyes, Expositio, vol. 1, pp. 68–104. 20 See Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1992), pp. 216–17. 21 See Moyes, Expositio, vol. 1, pp. 75–81.

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undergo, in which the Office of the Dead was a central text. One needs to remember the importance Rolle himself places on the solitary life, and the fact that, in the last years of his life, he provided support to female anchorites. In view of the recent discoveries made of the importance of Ancrene Wisse with regard to the lay use of Book of Hours,22 it is not incongruous to explore the ways in which Rolle might have been a significant transmitter of anchoritic practices to the secular clerical society of North Yorkshire. The liturgical bent of the Expositio leaves room also for passages where Rolle can expound his most important points of doctrine, and so turn scriptural exegesis into an occasion for him to model himself on, and claim the status of, the Old Testament prophet Job. My contention, thus, is that Rolle wrote this commentary in order to elevate his own status as a solitary, but also in order to offer to his growing public a way into anchoritic practice, into the modes that made Job, labelled by Rolle as the first solitary, a perfect interlocutor with God. Although much of what I write is hypothetical, one can understand that in an age when private forms of devotion competed, in terms of their salvific potential, with communal liturgical practice, the desire to make anchoritic practices accessible to the laity must have been irresistible to Rolle.23 Obviously, Rolle is not offering an account of the anchoritic mode of life, but, by choosing to write on the nine lessons from the Office of the Dead, he must have been aware that he was touching the core of its practice. Here, as already noted, is a text chosen to accompany the official ceremony of enclosure for the consecrated anchoress, a text that will support her in her daily and repetitive practice, all alone with God, and symbolically dead to the world.24 For those who sought an accommodation between their worldly affairs and the betterment of their soul through private forms of devotion, anchoritic practice must have been regarded as the supreme and ideal form of Christian life.25 For that matter, if Job suited Rolle as an exemplary solitary, he could also easily appeal to a more secular readership. After all, Job himself lived in the world, had children and lived in prosperity, until God granted Satan the right to test him. Ill, misunderstood by friends and family – they blame him for all his misfortunes – and stripped of all his material goods, Job remains steadfast in the face of adversity. After a long period of hard testing, Job receives everything back from God, and returns to live in the world. 22 See Bella Millett, ‘Ancrene Wisse and the Book of Hours’, in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiri-

tual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Cardiff & Toronto, 2000), pp. 21–40. 23 For an exploration of what Erler calls the ‘permeable partitions’ between the two poles represented by the wife and the nun, and the general notion of enclosure, see Lerner’s Women, Reading, and Piety, pp. 7–26. 24 For information on ceremonies of enclosure, see Otmarr Doerr, Das Institut des Inclusen in Suddeutschland, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Alten Mönchtums und des Benediktineordens, vol. 18 (Müenster in Westf., 1934); see also R. M. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England (London, 1914), esp. Appendix A (p. 192) which offers a translation of an Office for the enclosing of an anchorite, according to the Use of Sarum; see also Ann K. Warren, ‘The Nun as Anchoress: England 1100–1500’, in Distant Echoes: Medieval Religious Women, vol. 1, ed. John A. Nichols and Lilian T. Shank, Cistercian Studies Series 71 (Kalamazoo, 1984), pp. 197–212. 25 For a piece that argues for the influence of anchoritic practices on Margery Kempe’s own religiosity, see Denis Renevey, ‘Margery’s Performing Body: The Translation of Late Medieval Discursive Religious Practices’, Writing Religious Women, pp. 197–216.

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In the ceremony of enclosure for the attention of postulant anchorites, it is the penitential character of Job and his long-standing fight against the devil, the world and the flesh that are stressed.26 Even if strictly factual details about Job are absent from the ceremony, penitential elements and notions of deprivation, together with qualities such as patience, humility, perseverance and a determination to uphold spiritual truth, make Job a model for the good solitary. Job is dead to the world in his expectation of eternal judgement. One can point to the importance of the Book of Job for Ancrene Wisse, in which it is cited fifteen times. Several of the qualities attributed to Job (guardian against the eyes (Job 31: 1), spiritual seeker (Job 32: 1), practitioner of ascetic disciplines and secret performer of good deeds) are those expected of the female anchorites. The correspondences are too many to believe that Rolle was not aware of the impact his text would have when read or heard by an audience eager to imitate at home the formidable practices of the solitary life. Rolle fashions a treatise therefore that will allow for the adoption and adaptation of anchoritic practices by amateurs. In addition, the Expositio testifies to Rolle’s understanding of the spiritual content of anchoritic practices, which may have helped him to receive some kind of approbatio (approval) as a competent spiritual guide, a role to which he testifies in The Form of Living, written, shortly after the Expositio, for the professed anchoress Margaret Kirkby.27 One of Rolle’s idiosyncrasies, and a feature of his Chaucerian talent as a religious writer, is the remarkable way in which almost each of his pieces defies the genre in which it has been couched. Indeed, the Expositio, best labelled as liturgical exegesis, is nevertheless replete with passages depicting the mystical life, sometimes with obvious autobiographical touches. Rolle’s manipulation of the first person pronoun blurs our perceptions of the different personae inscribed in the narrative voice. Job, Rolle or the ideal solitary seem to think with one mind. Recognition of one’s sins, penitence and awareness of earthly life’s transitoriness loom large in this piece. Rolle makes those points his by considering the sight of his own corpse at the time of his death: Sed bonum est, fratres, humiles esse, miseriam nostram recogitare, dicentes cum beato Iob: In puluerem reduces me. Necesse est michi mori & in puluerem reduci, quia omnes morimur & quasi aqua delabimur in terram .28 (But it is good, brothers, to remain humble, to ponder over our misery, saying with the blessed Job: You will bring me back to ashes. It is necessary for me to die and to be brought back to ashes, because we all die and like water we descend into the earth.)

26 For an account of a late-medieval ceremony of enclosure performed by a German Augustinian

provost, see Johannes Busch, Chronicon Windeshemense und Liber de Reformatione Monasteriorum , ed. Karl Grube (Halle, 1886), pp. 657–8. 27 For an edition of the Middle English writings, see S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson, ed., Richard Rolle: Prose and Verse, edited from MS Longleat 29 and related manuscripts , EETS 293 (Oxford, 1988). 28 Moyes, Expositio, vol. 2, pp. 182–3.

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Devotional, more particularly anchoritic, practices seem to have had a deep influence on the ways in which Rolle set out his own devotional project. It may be that we need to investigate more deeply the impact of the liturgy and general devotional culture to assess his own contributions.29 An assessment of Rolle’s oeuvre within the parameters described above makes possible an evaluation of some of what we might call his theologies: which, because they lack any consistent expression of single-minded mystical intention, have received so far very little critical attention.

Contemplative Writer I have so far stressed non-mystical characteristics in Richard Rolle’s work, and I believe that only a careful assessment of his textual practices within the parameters of each genre discloses the multivocality with which the call to the divine is made by Rolle. One needs to track down the intensity of that call by assessing it as part of the modulations that generic variation makes possible for Rolle. That being said, and since this essay aims only to point to new areas of investigation, I would like to turn briefly to the pieces called Meditation A and Meditation B by looking at how a devotional and para-liturgical stance translates into contemplation. Meditation A treats the Passion incidents as part of a para-liturgical piece. Each moment provides for the equivalent of a lesson, each distinguished from the others by the framing Latin prayers borrowed from liturgical offices.30 Its arrangement, together with the provision of advice by the author at the end of the meditation, suggests use of this piece, as part of a daily spiritual programme, by a contemplative beginner, possibly a solitary or a recluse. The interplay between the Latin and the vernacular points to Rolle’s masterful use of existing frames, which serves to give credibility to his own creative input. The liturgical origin of the Latin fragments, certainly identifiable by contemporary readers, presumes an orthodox and communal dimension for the piece, and allows Rolle to offer a variation on the theme in the vernacular. However, such variation is limited in scope in Meditation A, and affective identification with the Passion narrative being presented is made possible thanks to the breathing rhythm imposed on the reader by the concatenation of short, powerful sentences: Sythen how mekeli he toke þis comfort of his disciple, and sithen how he come to his disciples and bad hem slepe and rest, and sithen how he come to hem and bad hem rise and wake, and sithen how he met Iudas þat traitour, and sayde, ‘Frende, warto commes thou?’ and mekely kissed him.31 29 For an assessment of Judica Me, a piece not discussed here, but which nevertheless participates in

Rolle’s pastoral and devotional concerns, see Watson, Richard Rolle, pp. 75–95; see also his ‘Richard Rolle as Elitist and Popularist: The Case of Judica Me’, in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late-Medieval England, ed. Michael Sargent (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 123–44. 30 See Ogilvie-Thomson, Richard Rolle, p. 212. 31 Ibid., p. 65, ll. 56–60.

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Each clause introduced by ‘sithen’ refers to an historical event, to be used as a meditative cluster on which the imagination may pause. The regular flow of events allows the contemplative to screen the whole Passion episode in one reading. Request for the recitation of Psalm 51 (Vulgate, 50), one of the Seven Penitential Psalms, nevertheless demonstrates that this text does not encourage too imaginative an engagement with the Passion incidents. The horizon of expectation is limited to a consideration of as accurate as possible an historical presentation of those events. The two Passion meditations attributed to Rolle are good cases in point if we wish to appreciate the transition from a penitential to a more contemplative mode. Meditation B differs significantly from the preceding text by its marked attention to the general state of the narrator, whose desires and mental preparation are clearly explicated. The reader, who is invited to endorse the point of view of the narrator, is frequently and forcefully led to consider his position with the deity, and to measure the distance which separates him from God. In short, the Passion appears as a most generous deed, performed willingly by God, and one for which endless words of thanks ought to be pronounced: Swet Ihesu, I thank þe, lord, with al my hert for þou profered þe to þat place where þou wist þy deth ordeyned; and I þank þe, lord, for þer þou shewedest wel þat þou was willy to dey for vs, and so I beleue, lord, þat þou chese þe day and þe tyme when þou woldest dey, and euery poynt of þy passioun was done at þy ordynaunce, and I beleue, lord, þat þou laide þy soule when þou wold, and, when þou woldest, tak hit ayeyne.32

Although the Passion material is still central to this text, and Latin prayers, borrowed, in this instance, from the York Hours of the Cross, provide a liturgical context as well, the repeated use of formulae (‘Swete Ihesu’) and the use of the present tense effect an affective bond that allows for a more subtle engagement with the historical material of the Passion: the gap between the narrative voice and the Passion is deleted by the internalisation and re-enactment of the Passion within the self.33 Focus on how the inner state of the ‘I’ voice is shaped by the incidents of the Passion is the real concern of this piece. It makes Meditation B a significant witness to the shift from the devotional to the more contemplative stance. Chapter 8 of Emendatio Vitae (The Emending of Life) insists similarly on the importance of meditation on the Passion: ‘Est autem meditacio bona de passione Christi et morte, et sepe recordari quantas penas et miserias sponte suscepit pro nostra salute’ (It is gude meditacion of cristis passion & his deed,

32 Ibid., pp. 69–70, ll. 32–7. 33 For a discussion of the Passion in Richard Rolle, see Marion Glasscoe, ‘Time of Passion: Latent Rela-

tionships between the Liturgy and Meditation in two Middle English Mystics’, in Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition, ed. Stanley S. Hussey and Helen Phillips (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 141–60; on Rolle and affectivity, see Vincent Gillespie, ‘Mystic’s Foot: Rolle and Affectivity’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England II, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1982), pp. 199–230.

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& oft to recorde qwhatt payns & wrechidnes frely he toke for our hele).34 This late piece, surviving in more than 110 manuscripts, and thus Rolle’s most often-copied text, one certainly appealing to a large variety of readers, is revealing of Rolle’s achievement as a Latin and vernacular theologian.35 The twelve-chapter division neatly describes a spiritual journey, one perhaps most appropriate to a solitary. However, just as, I argued, the Expositio constructs a general Christian model based on aspects of anchoritic culture, Emendatio Vitae, I contend, participates in the same desire for universalisation of the solitary life, one that was admired and imitated by lay readers, clergymen and coenobites. Rolle’s own example boosted interest in the solitary life only because it was part of a much larger phenomenon, visible and often tangible to the great majority in the late-medieval period.36 Thus, if the progress from conversion to the summits of contemplation described in the Emendatio may have applied best to a life of solitude, it may also have helped readers of or listeners to the treatise to situate themselves on their own spiritual journeys. The treatise, written in the epistolary mode, a genre much favoured by Rolle in his later career, borrows material from his previous Latin works. Insistence is put upon devotional and para-liturgical practices, considered to be appropriate for contemplatives. The twelve-chapter frame offers a progressive account of the religious life, with a penultimate chapter on the love of God, and a final, more technical one on contemplation, described as a process marked by lectio, oracio and meditacio. When pondering over the nature of the contemplative experience, Rolle, with genuine hesitation, it seems to me, offers a tentative account based both on Latin authorities and on his own experience: Si queratur quid sit contemplacio, difficile est diffinire. Dicunt quidam quod contemplatiua uita nichil aliud est quam rerum latencium futurarumque noticia, siue vacacio ab omnibus occupacionibus mundi, siue diuinarum studium litterarum. Alii dicunt quod contemplacio est libera perspicacia in sapiencie spectacula cum admiracione suspensa. Alii dicunt quod contemplacio est liber et perspicax animi intuitus ad vires perspicandas circumquaque diffusus. Alii dicunt, et bene, quod contemplacio est iubilus supernorum. Alii dicunt, et optime, quod contemplacio est per subleuate mentis iubilum mors carnalium affeccionum. Michi uidetur quod contemplacio sit iubilus diuini 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. (If it be asked qwhat is contemplacion: it is hard to defyne. Sum says, contemplatyfe lyf is not ellis bot knawlegis of þingis to cum & hyde, or to be voyde fro all wardly occupacion, or study of godis lettyrs. Odyr 34 See Richard Rolle, Emendatio Vitae. Orationes ad Honorem Nominis Ihesu , ed. Nicholas Watson,

Toronto Medieval Latin Texts 21 (Toronto, 1995), p. 51. For the Middle English translation, see The Fire of Love and The Mending of Life or The Rule of Living, translated from the Latin of Richard Rolle Richard Misyn, ed. Ralph Harvey, EETS OS 106 (Oxford, 1896), p. 119. 35 See Watson, Richard Rolle, p. 210. 36 For an account of the social and economic dimensions that regulated anchoritic practices, see Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley, 1985).

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says þat contemplacion is free sight in þe spectakyls of wysdom, with a full he meruayll. Odyr says þat contemplacion is a boke [read: free], & wys behaldynge of þe saule, spred all abowt to behald his myghtis. Odyr says, & well, þat contemplacion is Ioy of heuenly þingis. Odyr says, & best, þat contemplacion is deed of fleschly desyres be Ioye of þe mynde raisyd. To me it semys þat contemplacion is Ioyfull songe of godis lufe takyn in mynde, with swetnes of aungell lovynge. Þis is Iubilacion, þat is end of parfit prayer & of he devocion in þis lyfe. Þis is the myrth in mynde had gostely for the lufar everlastynge, with grete voys oowt brekand.)37

Rolle resorts to an affective mode when offering his own view on the contemplative life, going back to a style reminiscent of his previous Latin treatises on contemplation. However, the contemplative part of Emendatio Vitae, as well as that of his Middle English epistles, also written in his late career, belongs to a greater scheme, which comprises all the steps one has to make in the spiritual life from the very inception of a life dedicated to spiritual matters.

Conclusion Rolle is much more than a mystic, a modern label that fails to grasp the extent of his output in the larger field of devotional and theological literatures. His insistence on the devotion to the Name of Jesus, the manifestation of the presence of the divine in the form of celestial symphonies or other sounds, his interest in the gradation of the degrees of love, and the terminology of dulcor, calor and canor (sweetness, heat and song), most famously popularised in his Incendium Amoris (Fire of Love), should alert us to the ways in which devotional and theological antecedents shaped his own understanding of the spiritual life and its mystical manifestations, and helped him devise a system for the use of a larger audience, in the Latin or the vernacular.38 It is not my aim to deny here the usefulness of studying Rolle’s idiosyncrasies, but there is perhaps more to be gained in trying to understand how those idiosyncrasies were shaped, and how tradition contributed to making Rolle one of the most successful writers of the late-medieval period: one who, thanks to the careful construction of subtle and diverse theologies, made possible for some the hearing of the divine voice calling them back to their eternal abode. That Rolle’s success was ongoing is attested further by the ways several of his pieces were anthologised and compiled in the fifteenth century to suit new religious tastes.39 This is perhaps

37 See Richard Rolle, Emendatio Vitae, p. 63; The Mending of Life, p. 127, ll. 15–28. 38 On Rolle and the Holy Name, see my ‘Name Above Names: The Devotion to the Name of Jesus from

Richard Rolle to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection I’, The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland and Wales, ed. Marion Glasscoe Exeter Symposium VI (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 103–21; see also my ‘The Name Poured Out: Margins, Illuminations and Miniatures as Evidence for the Practice of Devotions to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England’, in The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians, vol. 9, Analecta Cartusiana 130, ed. James Hogg (Salzburg, 1996), pp. 127–47. 39 See, for instance, Eddie Jones, ‘A Chapter from Richard Rolle in Two Fifteenth-Century Compilations’, Leeds Studies in English 27 (1996), pp. 139–62.

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one of the most promising areas – indeed, a key area – for further studies on Rolle. It is evidence that, as Rolle appropriated the voices of the auctores and the genres in which they were couched, the intensity of his own was deemed authoritative enough to find itself in its turn absorbed into anthologies and compilations which made possible for readers, religious or lay, to hear and dialogue with the divine voice.

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6 Language and its Limits: The Cloud of Unknowing and Pearl A. C. SPEARING

W

HEN I was a student reading English at Cambridge, I had the good fortune to be taught by a great medieval scholar and inspiring teacher, Elizabeth Salter, one of whose special enthusiams was the Middle English mystics. She had been a student of Phyllis Hodgson, the editor of the standard scholarly edition of the Cloud-author’s work, and that was doubtless how I came to read The Cloud of Unknowing for the first time, when most of my contemporaries were more likely to be reading Sons and Lovers or A Passage to India . But Elizabeth Salter saw the writings of the medieval mystics as works of literature, to be read alongside the poetry of their age, the poetry of Chaucer and Langland and the Pearl-poet. In 1966, for example, she wrote in an essay on Chaucer’s greatest single poem, the story of the passionate and tragic love of Troilus and Criseyde, It is both a sad and a triumphant fact that the only medieval writings on love which rival the grace and intensity of Chaucer’s language in Book III of Troilus are religious treatises, and Chaucer had to win the full release of his imaginative powers for this difficult subject by religious means.1

With Elizabeth Salter’s encouragement, I read the Cloud as a literary text alongside other literary texts; that is, as a text whose meaning is not on the other side of its language, but is created in its language. More than ever, I continue to find that a profitable way of reading it. As a student I found the Cloud enormously difficult and enormously impressive, but I did not go back to it in a serious way until quite recently, when I was commissioned to produce a new translation of the Cloud and some of the associated texts for the Penguin Classics series. I had never before translated anything of comparable length, and I knew no better than to agree. If I had realized what a gruelling task the translation would be, I am not sure that I would ever have started it. For better or worse, it was completed and published,2 and labouring at it forced me to think further about 1 2

‘Troilus and Criseyde: a Reconsideration’, in Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis, ed. John Lawlor (London, 1966), pp. 86–106, at p. 103. The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works, translated with an introduction and notes by A. C.

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the distinctive way in which the Cloud-author uses language – uses an intensely bodily language to point beyond the bodily sphere. For this essay I had originally intended to put the Cloud alongside The Mirror of Simple Souls – that is, the Middle English version of the French mystical work for which its author, Marguerite Porete, was burned at the stake in Paris in 1310. Marguerite’s French is highly poetic, deeply obscure and sensationally extreme in its doctrines; the anonymous Middle English translator evidently did not know that it was by a woman or that it had been condemned as heretical, he often failed to understand the French original (which probably came to him in a corrupt form, efforts having been made to suppress it entirely), and though he obviously found it exciting, he felt obliged to insert every so often glosses of his own explaining that it did not really mean what it seemed to say. The Middle English Mirror of Simple Souls raises questions of language in an even more acute form than the Cloud, because in it the apprehension of transcendence is doubly filtered through two bodily vernacular languages. On the other hand, it uses the terminology and concepts of fin’amor and of medieval courtliness, in their most exclusive form and in what seems the most literal way, to define a spiritual elite of God’s special friends and lovers who constitute the true Church, Holy Church the Great, by contrast with the Church as an institution, Holy Church the Little, the members of which will never be welcome in God’s court. Attempting to teach the Mirror in seminars on medieval religious writing at the University of Virginia, I found the students reduced to a state of stunned bafflement in which I largely shared, and this led me to abandon my idea of discussing it here alongside The Cloud of Unknowing.3 Instead I pair the Cloud with Pearl, another text that uses the terminology of erotic love-longing and earthly courtliness to approach the transcendent, though in less extreme and more readily intelligible ways than the Mirror. Pearl is not strictly a mystical work, but it is one that raises analogous questions about the relation of earthly language to heavenly values. The anonymous Cloud-author’s writings, consisting of seven closely interrelated English prose texts, derive from the tradition of the via negativa, the doctrine going back to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite which emphasises God’s transcendence in such a drastic way as to deny the possibility of making

3

Spearing (London, 2001). Much of my discussion here of the Cloud is based on the introduction to this translation. I have however translated selections from the Middle English Mirror into modern English; they appear in Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality, ed. Elizabeth Spearing (New York, 2002). Valuable explorations of the English Mirror are: Michael G. Sargent, ‘Le Mirouer des simples âmes and the English Mystical Tradition’, in Abendländische Mystik im Mittelalter, ed. Kurt Ruh (Stuttgart, 1986), pp. 443–65, and Nicholas Watson, ‘Misrepresenting the Untranslatable: Marguerite Porete and the Mirouer des simples âmes’, New Comparison 12 (1991), pp. 124–37, and ‘Melting into God the English Way: Deification in the Middle English Version of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes anienties’, in Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 19–49. On the French Mirouer, see Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia, 1995), ch. 5, and ‘The Mirror and the Rose: Marguerite Porete’s Encounter with the Dieu d’Amours’, in The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature , ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski et al. (New York, 2002), pp. 105–23; and Michael G. Sargent, ‘The Annihilation of Marguerite Porete’, Viator 28 (1997), pp. 253–79.

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any true statements about God in human language. Most Middle English religious writing is strongly Christocentric: it focuses on Christ’s Humanity and his appeal to human love as the bridge that can cross the gap between God and man. The Incarnation is generally seen as something more than the concession to human weakness that even St Bernard describes it as being; it is rather a fulfilment of God’s own love and longing – he desires to participate in the experience of his creatures, including their suffering. Langland, for example, imagines God, in his goodness and love, as sharing Adam’s desire for what he calls kynde knowynge, natural experiential knowledge, knowledge of evil as well as good. In Passus XVIII of the B-text of Piers Plowman, when Christ after being crucified is about to harrow Hell, the character Peace speaks as follows: Forthi God, of his goodnesse, the first gome Adam, Sette hym in solace and in sovereyn murthe; And siththe he suffred hym synne, sorwe to feele – To wite what wele was, kyndeliche to knowe it. And after, God auntrede hymself and took Adames kynde To wite what he hath suffred in thre sondry places, Bothe in hevene and in erthe – and now til helle he thenketh, To wite what alle wo is, that woot of alle joye.4 (And so, of his goodness, God placed the first human being, Adam, in content and in supreme joy; and then he allowed him to sin, so that he could feel sorrow – so as to know what happiness was, to know it by experience. [This is part of an argument based on the doctrine of contraries: that we cannot truly know anything except by also knowing its opposite.] And afterwards, God ventured himself [put himself at risk] and took on Adam’s nature, so as to know what he had suffered, in three different places: in heaven and on earth, and now He plans to enter hell, so that He who knows all joy can know all misery.)

Langland’s kynde knowynge means not intellectual knowledge of the sort aimed at by university theologians, but felt knowledge, knowledge by experience. A similar emphasis on God’s willing participation in the risky adventure of being human is found in Julian of Norwich, especially in the parable of the Lord and the Servant in chapter 51 of the Long Text of her Revelations, where Adam and Jesus are identified as the servant who falls in his eagerness to serve his lord. This does not mean that God’s transcendence is denied, and there are traces of the apophatic in Julian, in Langland, and even in the highly sensuous writings of Richard Rolle; but nowhere in medieval English religious writings are transcendence and apophasis so fundamental as in the Cloud group. The Cloud-author wrote well after the establishment of the feast of Corpus Christi, but he never mentions the Eucharist, the actual body of Christ in orthodox theology, whether as an object of worship in itself or as a means to union with the divine; and he almost never employs the images of wooing and marriage, derived from the erotic and bridal symbolism of the Song of Songs, that are 4

The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Complete edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, rev. edn (London, 1987), XVIII, 217–24.

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commonly used to express the passionate relation between God and the soul. He does emphasise love as the only means of piercing the ‘cloud of unknowing’ that separates man from God, but for the contemplative, as he sees it, the object of that love must be not Christ’s naked and suffering body but something much more abstract, God’s ‘naked being’ (that is the phrase he uses). He certainly states the necessity to approach contemplation through meditations on Christ’s Humanity and his Passion, but he ultimately sees such meditations as a hindrance to true contemplation. They are ‘the door of devotion and the truest entrance to contemplation possible in this life’, as he puts it in The Book of Privy Counselling (I am quoting throughout from my own translation), but the more advanced contemplative must not just linger in the doorway. He has to get beyond those bodily meditations or they will become not just hindrances but diabolic temptations that drag him back from his brief moments of union with the Godhead. This doctrine has important implications for the use of language in the service of mysticism. For the Cloud-author language is essentially speech. He frames the Cloud, and to some extent the other works, as dramatically conceived dialogues, in which an I is addressing a thou, a master addressing an apprentice in contemplation, to whom various questions and objections are attributed. And speech is, as he says, ‘a bodily activity performed by the tongue, a bodily organ’, and so ‘it must always be spoken in bodily words’ (Cloud, chapter 61). ‘Of the work that belongs to God alone’, he writes, ‘I dare not take it upon me to speak with my blabbering fleshly tongue’ (Cloud, chapter 26). When spoken aloud, that last phrase, ‘my blabryng fleschely tonge’ in the original, makes one specially aware of the bodiliness of the tongue in one’s mouth, flopping about like a large fish. The Cloud-author is saying not only that we have to speak of God in metaphors rather than in literal language (and those metaphors include even apparently neutral terms such as prepositions), but that all human language is contaminated by its bodily origin. Nothing spoken by the blabbering fleshly tongue can avoid contamination by fleshliness. You might expect, then, that he would have written in Latin, the standard language of theology, adapted by centuries of use to abstraction and to logical argument, and a language that, though it was spoken, was always associated with writing, because it was spoken only by those who could write it, rather than in English, the mother tongue, so much more strongly linked with the body and with speech. In fact, the English in which he writes is often markedly concrete, vividly evoking bodily activities and sensations. Here are a few examples. He reminds his disciple that God ‘kindled your desire, and fastened to it a leash of longing’, by which he pulled him up to a higher spiritual level, and he assures him that ‘you can learn to lift up the foot of your love and step towards the state and level of life that is perfect’ (Cloud, chapter 1). (I have tried to find equivalents for the alliteration that is a common feature of the author’s prose, and indeed of Middle English devotional prose in general, because that alliteration helps to throw the phonetic materiality of speech into relief.) He writes that God ‘only wants you to watch him and let him alone; and guard the windows and door against flies and enemy attacks’ (chapter 2). The disciple is told that he must ‘step above’ meditation on God’s goodness ‘stoutly but deftly, with a

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devout and delightful stirring of love, and struggle to pierce that darkness above you; and beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love’ (chapter 6). Explaining why monosyllabic prayer is best, the author suggests that if your deadly enemy shouts out the one word ‘Fire!’ you will get up and help him to extinguish the fire, ‘yes, even if it were about midwinter’s night’ (chapter 38) – an addition that evokes darkness and cold by contrast with the light and warmth of fire, very much in line with Langland’s insistence on knowing things by their opposites. He tells the disciple to await God’s will, and not to ‘reach out over-hastily like a greedy greyhound’ (chapter 46). There are also the extensive passages in which the author mocks the pretensions of false contemplatives, and gives extremely concrete and amusingly uncharitable descriptions of their strained grimaces and theatrical gestures, ‘always smiling and laughing at every word they speak, as if they were flirtatious girls or silly juggling jesters in search of attention’ (chapter 53). So his English has a pervasive bodiliness that constantly reminds us of its unfitness to address God’s naked being. But why did he write in English at all? He seems likely to have been a Carthusian, and Carthusian writers, learned and austerely withdrawn from the daily world, normally used Latin. One of them indeed, Richard Methley, translated the Cloud into Latin in the fifteenth century; it appears in the same manuscript as his Latin version of The Mirror of Simple Souls. So perhaps the explanation for the use of English is that the novice addressed in the text would not have understood Latin – but then we do not know that that novice really existed (he could well have been invented as a rhetorical device to make exposition clearer); and some of the manuscripts are heavily glossed in Latin, so the text must have appealed to readers who knew Latin. Again, at the beginning and end of the Cloud, the author stresses that he does not want his work to reach anyone who is not totally committed to achieving ‘the highest point of the contemplative life that may be attained by grace by a perfected soul’ (Prologue) – and, unless that was an ingenious way of encouraging people to read the Cloud by telling them that it was forbidden, he could surely have protected it more effectively against unfit readers by composing it in Latin. This paradox has of course been noticed by the leading scholars in the field, from Phyllis Hodgson on, but they have generally been content to note it as a paradox, an inexplicable curiosity, and then pass by.5 The most helpful suggestion is perhaps that of John Burrow: so as to avoid the confusion of the bodily with the spiritual, about which the author is particularly concerned, ‘it is best that the inevitable physical imagery should be clearly recognized for what it is: physical’6 – and that physicality is best conveyed by the use of the vernacular. This suggestion is refined by Nicholas Watson, when he writes of the Cloud-author as deliberately ‘plumbing the possibilities for error . . . in the 5

6

E.g., Phyllis Hodgson, Three 14th-Century English Mystics (London, 1967), p. 29; Alastair Minnis, ‘Affection and Imagination in The Cloud of Unknowing and Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, Traditio 39 (1983), pp. 323–66, at p. 342; J. H. P. Clark, The Cloud of Unknowing: An Introduction, vol. 1 (Salzburg, 1995), p. 35. J. A. Burrow, ‘Fantasy and Language in The Cloud of Unknowing’, Essays in Criticism 27 (1977), pp. 283–98, at p. 295.

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language in which he writes . . . Both English and its uneducated readers are indeed prone to error; but at least this is obvious, as the inadequacy of Latin is not.’7 But it may be possible to go further still, if we see the Cloud corpus not only (as we certainly should) in the context of its own time but in that of more recent thought about language. Language has been at the very centre of philosophical thought over the last century, and I have found it helpful for my own understanding, and for teaching students, to try to see the Cloud in that more recent light. Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in the Philosophical Investigations that ‘Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language’,8 and the Cloud-author would surely have agreed, though perhaps substituting ‘theology’ or ‘mystical theology’ for ‘philosophy’. A leading commentator on Wittgenstein explains: The philosopher is driven by a passionate desire to understand the limits of language, and, when he tries to satisfy this desire, the first thing that inevitably happens is that his mind is filled with images which, though they are delusive, have a primitive naturalness which he must experience. Then, and only then, can he go on to achieve the understanding that he seeks.9

We have to experience the ‘primitive naturalness’ of everyday language, something especially manifest in the vernacular, in order to transcend it; and one thing the author does, both to make us experience it and to help us get beyond it, is to make its concreteness undo itself, as in an example I have already given, when he tells us to ‘beat upon that thick cloud of unknowing with a sharp dart of longing love’. The thick cloud is concrete enough and so is the dart, and so is the verb ‘to beat’: we all know what a cloud is (especially if we live in England), and medieval people all knew what a dart or spear was, and they all knew in a bodily way what it was to beat on something, but how can you beat upon a thick cloud with a sharp dart? Confronted with that sequence of words, the imagination is at once stimulated and defeated. Another tactic the author employs is to evoke a real-life situation in its full concreteness and then snatch it away from us. Here is an example that makes this particularly clear. He refers to the ‘darkness, and as it were a cloud of unknowing’ (chapter 4) that stand between the would-be contemplative and God, but he goes on: Do not suppose, because I call it a darkness or a cloud, that it is a cloud condensed out of the vapours that float in the air, or a darkness like that in your house at night when your candle is out. By intellectual ingenuity you can imagine such a darkness or cloud brought before your eyes on the brightest day of summer, just as, conversely, in the darkest night of winter you can imagine a clear shining light. Give up such errors; that is not what I mean. For when I say ‘darkness’ I mean an absence of

7 8 9

Nicholas Watson, ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature , ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 539–65, at pp. 552–3. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 2nd edn (New York, 1958), pt 1, sect. 109, p. 47. David Pears, Wittgenstein (London, 1971), p. 122.

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knowing, in the sense that everything you do not know, or have forgotten, is dark to you, because you cannot see it with your mind’s eye. And for this reason it is not called a cloud in the air but a cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God.

Do not imagine what I am making you imagine – something so readily imagined by a medieval reader, because he had only candles to light his house, and for him night would be more densely dark when the candles went out than it would be for dwellers in modern cities or suburbs or even villages. Through language we are brought to a sense of language’s limits, and perhaps to a faint sense of what transcends those limits. It is an effect described by Jacques Derrida as he struggles to find a way of escaping from the bondage imposed on thought by language itself, the very means we use to think with: he refers to finding ‘the crevice through which the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure can be glimpsed’.10 Language imposes closure on our ability to think and to imagine, yet perhaps we can find crevices in it through which we can glimpse what lies beyond it and therefore has no name. Derrida’s later thought seemed to be getting nearer to a negative theology; and I do not think it misleading to describe the Cloud-author’s method as deconstructive, a term that Watson also uses. The word ‘deconstruct’ is commonly used to mean something not very different from ‘analyse’, but that is a simplification of deconstruction as practised by Derrida. If the Cloud-author’s method is deconstructive, it is because he uses language to reveal the hidden contradictions, the forces at war within language, the contradictions that we encounter in any text when we try to see how language can represent reality. So Derrida writes that ‘the movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take accurate aim, except by inhabiting those structures.’11 The Cloud-author has to inhabit the structures of the mother tongue in all its bodiliness in order to undo the closure they impose; that, I think, was the fundamental reason why he wrote in English. Let me turn now to Pearl, contemporary with the Cloud, and like it one of a group of texts by a single anonymous author. But Pearl is a poem, and one of extraordinarily elaborate, even ostentatious, artistry, consisting of 101 intricately rhymed twelve-line stanzas, linked together by many kinds of verbal and phrasal repetition within and also between the twenty groups into which the stanzas are arranged. It is a first-person account of a vision in which the ‘I’ of the narrative,12 mourning over the loss of a pearl, finds himself in a richly jewelled other world where he meets a pearl-like and pearl-bedecked maiden whom, as most scholars believe, we are meant to identify as his dead daughter. First he sees her on the further bank of a river, from which she instructs him in the theology of salvation, then he sees her from a greater distance inside the 10 Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, 1976), p. 14. 11 Ibid., p. 24. 12 For justification of the use of this clumsy locution instead of the more common ‘narrator’, ‘speaker’,

etc., see my ‘Poetic Identity’, in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 35–51, and a fuller discussion of narration in Pearl in my forthcoming book, Textual Subjectivity, Oxford, 2005.

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Heavenly Jerusalem, as one of the procession of innocents following the Lamb of God. He tries to cross the river to be reunited with her, but that is not God’s will, and he is abruptly roused from his vision. In many ways Pearl is quite different from the Cloud. Most obviously, it is an account of a specific experience rather than a treatise on how to attain a certain kind of experience; and I imagine that most readers share the feeling that Pearl is a literary fiction. Regardless of what relation it may bear to the real life of the poet or of the person for whom he may have written it, it is a work belonging to a courtly tradition of poetic invention. It offers an analogy to mystical experience, using much of the technical terminology in which mystical experiences were analysed, but the man who wrote it is not truly claiming to have undergone the events he recounts in the first person. Again, Pearl differs from the Cloud in its conception of the heavenly goal of vision. For the Cloud-author, as we have seen, this is the ‘naked being’ of the Godhead; for the Pearl-poet it is Christ as the Lamb, in whom that naked being is cloaked in what the poet refers to several times as wedez, garments, as white as pearls. Moreover, this vision of God is truly bodily in that the ‘I’ sees with horror and pity a bleeding wound in his side: Bot a wounde ful wyde and weete con wyse Anende hys herte, þur
hyde torente. Of his quyte syde his blod outsprent. Alas, þo
t I, who did þat spyt? (1135–8)13 (But a very wide and wet wound could be seen close to his heart, torn through his skin. His blood gushed out from his white side. Alas, I thought, who did that evil deed?)

This wound is not the ‘faire delectabil place, and large enow for al mankynd that shal be save to resten in pece and in love’ seen by Julian of Norwich in her vision,14 but a messy gash. Another difference is that whereas the Eucharist is never mentioned in the Cloud, Pearl culminates with an image of the Eucharist, God ‘in the forme of bred and wyn’ that ‘þe preste vus schewez vch a daye’ (in the form of bread and wine which the priest displays to us every day (1209–10)). This is what the poem’s ‘I’ recognises to be his only consolation for the loss of the maiden he has seen in the vision, as it is the consolation for all human losses. The consecrated host, available to be worshipped daily as the body of Christ, the daily bread of the Lord’s Prayer spiritually understood, is the final transform of the poem’s central symbol, the pearl. (In late-medieval pictorial art, especially in depictions of the moment of elevation at which the priest ‘schewez’ the host to the congregation, or in pictures showing Corpus Christi processions in which it is displayed while being ceremonially carried through the streets of a city, the host, round, white, pure, infinitely valuable, is often shown looking just like a large pearl.)15 Again, Pearl is pervaded with the erotic 13 I quote Pearl from The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript , ed. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron

(London, 1978). 14 A Revelation of Love (LT), ed. Marion Glasscoe, rev. edn (Exeter, 1993), ch. 24 (p. 35). 15 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), provides

many illustrations of this.

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and bridal imagery that the Cloud excludes as a means of evoking the relation between God and humanity. For, finally, Pearl is a courtly poem, a finely wrought aesthetic object devised as a fit setting for the pearl of great price that is its subject. It uses courtly as well as mystical vocabulary, and imagines heaven as a magnificent court or an imperial city, the Blessed Virgin as an empress, the pearl maiden and her fellow innocents as queens, divine grace as a matter of elegant manners – grace as graciousness – and the whole other world of the vision as made out of pearls and other precious stones and metals. Entering the visionary world of Pearl is like stepping into a late-medieval manuscript illumination, but in a manuscript much grander than the rather shabby one in which the poem actually survives. It is like being inside a picture in a magnificent book produced for some great lord such as the Duc de Berry, glittering with gold and azure, vastly expensive as well as dazzlingly beautiful, a world in which the trees have indigo trunks and leaves like burnished silver, and brilliantly coloured birds sing in time to the beating of their wings as if they were priceless mechanical toys.16 Or again it is like entering an aristocratic playground such as the famous park of Hesdin owned by the kings of France, an exclusive resort that contained not just lavish gardens but hydraulically operated automata (‘Les ars, les engins, les conduis’),17 all the products of earthly wealth and human skill. The Cloud-author is strongly opposed to the analogy between earthly value and heavenly value that is at the centre of Pearl. This is implicit throughout his work, but one place where it is made explicit is when he is satirising the ‘presumptuous young mystical disciples’ who imagine that God is literally ‘up there’. ‘At times’, he writes, ‘these men will penetrate the planetary spheres with the ingenuity of their imaginations, and make a hole in the firmament so as to look in through it.’ And he goes on: These men will fashion a God as they please, and clothe him in rich clothes, and place him on a throne, far more elaborately than he has ever been painted on earth. These men will create angels in bodily likeness, and provide each of them with different kinds of musical instrument, far more elaborate than was ever seen or heard in this life. (Chapter 57)

That describes the kind of thing the Pearl-poet does; and if the Cloud-author had known Pearl (there is no reason to suppose that he did), I think he would have taken an immediate dislike to it, as an egregious instance of what he calls ‘vanity and falsehood’ (chapter 57). Impatience, in the form of an unwillingness to suffer gladly what he regards as folly or error, is somewhat characteristic of the Cloud-author. But if we look more closely at Pearl than I imagine he would have had the 16 For studies and illustrations of such manuscripts, see Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of

Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries , 2 vols (New York, 1974). 17 ‘The artifices, the automata, the watercourses’, quoted from Machaut’s Remede de Fortune 814, part

of a description of Hesdin, in Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement du Roy de Behaigne and Remede de Fortune, ed. James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler (Athens, GA, 1988). On Hesdin, see Anne Hagopian van Buren, ‘Reality and Literary Romance in the Park of Hesdin’, in Medieval Gardens, ed. Elizabeth McDougall (New York, 1986), pp. 117–34.

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patience to do, we shall find that it too is aware of the problems and limits of bodily language and bodily imagery in dealing with the transcendent. The poet is constantly playing on words, and in doing so he goes beyond what might seem the limiting pictorialism of his poem, the fetishisation of the visual and the visible, which has its parallel in the late-medieval practices that turned the Eucharist into an object to be displayed and worshipped, to be received through the eyes rather than the mouth. (It is not by accident that the poem’s final lines refer to the Eucharist as something shown by the priest to the congregation.) But for the poet, it would seem, the vernacular language itself embodies divine meanings in its apparently random intersections and coincidences of earthly meaning, and he makes these apparent in the repetitions of individual words that link his stanzas together through rhyme and concatenation.18 For example, in Middle English as in Modern English the word spot means both a place and a blemish. In the opening group of five stanzas the phrase ‘perle wythouten spotte’ (spotless pearl) is repeated at the close of each stanza, but the first line of the next stanza in each case uses the phrase ‘þat spot’ (that place) to refer to the garden or graveyard where the earthly pearl is buried, thus implying that the earthly place, for all its beauty, is itself an imperfection. (The poem never says that, but the poet releases a meaning that for him is implicit in the vernacular language itself.) Similarly, in the thirteenth group of stanzas there is a repeated play on the words maskellez (spotless or immaculate) and makelez (matchless), which culminates in the maiden’s explanation that, though maskellez, she is not makelez, because she is only one of 144,000 brides of the Lamb who are all equally spotless, equally innocent. In the sixteenth group of stanzas there is a repeated pun on two senses of mote, as ‘spot’ – a mote in the eye – and ‘city’: so the Heavenly Jerusalem is a ‘mote wythouten moote’ (948). The most daring of all these plays on words comes in line 1046, where the poet is explaining that the inhabitants of the Heavenly Jerusalem needed no sun or moon because the Lamb of God gave out such radiance: ‘Þe self God watz her lombe-ly
t’ (God himself was their lamplight/Lamb-light). The similarity in sound between the two words lamb and lamp, especially close in the poet’s own dialect, in which voiced plosives tend to become unvoiced at the end of a word, so that final bs sound like ps – that similarity conveys not just a human meaning but a divine meaning. For the Pearl-poet human language, including the vernacular of the Northwest Midlands, is pervaded with divine meanings that poetry can throw into relief. All this is different from the Cloud-author’s use of and attitude towards language, but it shows a similar awareness of language itself as a crucial issue in the struggle to express the relations between God and humanity. And there are also ways in which the Pearl-poet recognises that bodily language and images belonging to earthly experience do not provide perfect analogies for the divine.

18 Wordplay in Pearl has been much discussed by scholars, and the examples I give have been amply

noticed, though perhaps not in the context that concerns me here, the poet’s use of the vernacular to convey transcendence. For an exhaustive listing, including repetitions, formulaic systems and other forms of verbal patterning, see Sylvia Tomasch, ‘A Pearl Punnology’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 88 (1989), pp. 1–20.

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The techniques he uses to turn the gap between them to his purpose are surprisingly similar to those of the Cloud-author. For example, the maiden is a bride of the Lamb and a queen in heaven, but the ‘I’ of the poem has difficulty in grasping that this does not imply the uniqueness that would be entailed by bridal and royal terminology on earth – it does not imply that she is the Lamb’s only bride and heaven’s only queen. On earth (which for the poet meant within Christendom) a man can have only one bride, and a kingdom can have only one queen, but in heaven that is not so, and the maiden is not the Lamb’s sole bride and heaven’s sole queen. As the ‘I’ acknowledges, too, the maiden’s realm of being lies beyond the scope of human art and human understanding, and it can only be expressed in negative terms. As he puts it, Thy beauté com never of nature: Pymalyon paynted never thy vys, Ne Arystotel nawther by hys lettrure Of carped the kynde these propertéz. (749–52) (Your beauty never came from nature; Pygmalion never painted your face, and neither did Aristotle with his learning speak of the nature of these properties of yours.)

Pygmalion was an artist who created a sculpture of a woman so beautiful that he fell in love with it; but the beauty of the pearl-maiden was the product neither of nature nor of this almost magical art, nor could ‘the Philosopher’ define the distinctive properties that make her what she is. The sense of impossibility conveyed here forces us to grasp the limits to earthly conceptions and to try, at least, to project our imaginations into the incomprehensible realm of transcendence, to try to glimpse ‘the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure’. Another example is the way the poet presents the Heavenly Jerusalem. The idea of heaven as a city is well established, of course, and the poet takes it and nearly all the details of his description from the Apocalypse of St John, the last book of the Bible. Medieval readers would probably have had no difficulty in imagining the realm inhabited by God and the blessed, the realm glimpsed by contemplatives on earth, as a particularly splendid earthly city, a walled city with streets and houses, through which the Lamb and his brides move in a familiar kind of civic prosessyoun (1096) – as it might be, a Corpus Christi procession (for the pearl-like host was often imprinted with the Lamb of God).19 The poet was writing in the period when devotional confraternities began to proliferate,20 and, like members of a medieval guild or Corpus Christi fraternity, those processing are all wearing a single ‘livery’, as he puts it (1108).21 The ‘elders’ mentioned in the Apocalypse become aldermen (1120), again a term

19 Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 39. 20 See Miri Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities and Late Medieval Piety’, Studies in Church History 23

(1986), pp. 97–109; and for a full account of the part played by fraternities in the Corpus Christi procession, see Rubin, Corpus Christi, ch. 4. 21 Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities’, p. 104, notes as typical that ‘At Grantham the [Corpus Christi] fraternity participated in the procession in livery.’

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that would be associated with civic hierarchies.22 In these ways the Heavenly Jerusalem seems like a familiar earthly city; and whereas the heavenly city of the Apocalypse is 12,000 furlongs square, the poet follows most commentaries on the Apocalypse in reducing it to twelve furlongs (1030)23 – about a mile and a half – so that instead of being unimaginably huge it has realistic dimensions, comparable to those of the largest English cities of his time. But the poet also brings together in a single stanza a whole group of ways (some taken from the Bible, some not) in which the Heavenly Jerusalem was seen to be unlike an earthly city. There was no sun or moon, of course; but also no churches (and just think what a prominent and crucial feature churches with their towers and spires would have been in a city like York or Norwich). Therefore there were no Masses, for there the Lamb himself is the sacrifice (1064); the gates were never closed (1065–6), unlike those of medieval walled cities, which were always locked at night for safety; and there was no ‘fylþe oþer galle oþer glette’ (1060), no filth or muck or slime, in the streets – very different indeed from what was likely to be found in the streets of medieval cities. So the Pearl-poet is really doing something quite like the Cloud-author when he says that by darkness he does not mean darkness like that in your house at night when your candle is out. Imagine heaven as a city, he tells us, but do not suppose that it has the features that characterise the city you imagine. Each in its own way, then, the Cloud and Pearl both focus on language and its limits; and in both meaning is worked out through the vernacular language. For that reason, it would be very misleading to think of either text as a mere vehicle for extractable doctrine: what the two writers do, they do in and through their writing, and you cannot rely on translations (including mine of the Cloud) to tell you what that is.

22 At York, for example, the twelve aldermen accompanied the city council and the mayor in the Corpus

Christi procession (Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 257). 23 Sarah Stanbury, ‘Pearl and the Idea of Jerusalem’, Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 16 (1989),

pp. 117–31, at p. 120 and n. 16.

7 Walter Hilton THOMAS H. BESTUL

W

ALTER Hilton is one of the most important religious writers of late-medieval England. He was especially popular in the fifteenth century and, with the advent of printing, continued to be read well into the sixteenth. He succeeded in appealing to a relatively broad cross-section of lay and clerical readership by espousing a moderate, safely orthodox approach to matters of spirituality and religious practice. Hilton left a variety of works, the longest and most popular of which is the Scale of Perfection, a comprehensive treatise on the contemplative life written in English for a woman who had taken religious orders.1 Although the established details of Hilton’s life are meagre, we are nevertheless fortunate in knowing more about him than we do of many medieval authors. The date and place of Hilton’s birth are unknown, but a date in the 1340s seems likely.2 There is good reason to believe he studied canon law, probably at Cambridge. He probably spent some time as a religious hermit before joining the order of Augustinian Canons. He died in 1396 at the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton, in Nottinghamshire. Besides the Scale, Hilton’s English works include On the Mixed Life (to which we shall return later), a brief book of instruction for a layman on how to lead a ‘mixed’ life combining aspects of both active and contemplative lives while at the same time maintaining a secular existence. Also Hilton’s are the brief treatise Of Angel’s Song, which critiques what to Hilton is a mistaken understanding of the mystical experience as bodily or physical, and a work known as Eight Chapters on Perfection , a treatise dealing with, among other topics, the dangers that beset the person attempting to lead a contemplative life. Hilton also is likely to have been the author of separate English commentaries on Psalm 90 (beginning ‘Qui habitat’ in the Vulgate version) and Psalm 91 (‘Bonum est’). It is much less likely that he wrote a commentary on the ‘Benedictus’ (Luke 1: 68–80).3

1

2 3

The only edition of the Middle English text is Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection , ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, 2000) [hereafter cited as Bestul], although a critical edition for the Early English Text Society is in progress. A translation with an excellent introduction and notes is Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, trans. John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, Classics of Western Spirituality series (New York, 1991) [hereafter cited as Clark–Dorward]. See Clark–Dorward, pp. 13–15, for discussion of what is known about Hilton’s life. For these works, with bibliographical information, and assessment of their authenticity, see Valerie Lagorio and Michael Sargent, ‘English Mystical Writings’, in A Manual of the Writings in Middle

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In common with many of his contemporaries, Hilton wrote in Latin as well as English. His surviving Latin works are usually in the form of semi-public letters written to address specific, often controversial topics. He wrote to Adam Horsley a letter De utilitate et prerogativis religionis (On the Usefulness and Prerogatives of Religion), a defence of forms of religious life lived according to a rule, which seems to respond to Wycliffite critiques.4 Another Latin treatise, De adoracione imaginum (On the Adoration of Images), defends the use of images in devotion, again against Wycliffite challenge. There is also a letter, Epistola de lectione, intentione, oratione, meditatione, etc. (On Reading, Intention, Prayer, Meditation, etc.) in which Hilton speaks as a spiritual guide in defence of orthodoxy. A letter addressed to a solitary, De imagine peccati (On the Image of Sin), states that he too is a solitary, and is the source for the biographical datum that Hilton experienced the eremitical life. The Epistola ad quemdam seculo renuntiare volentem (Letter to One Wishing to Renounce the World) was written to a layman to encourage him in finding a suitable spiritual life. Hilton is usually classified as a mystic in modern histories of literature and spirituality. He is almost always grouped with other writers active in the fourteenth century or the early years of the fifteenth, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and Margery Kempe, to form a canonical roll call of ‘the leading English mystics’.5 Recently the terms ‘mystic’ and ‘mysticism’ have come under criticism as not particularly useful or apt designations for these writers and their works.6 Part of the problem is that the terms are anachronistic, the product of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rather than the Middle Ages. In their excessive precision, they also obscure the relations these writers have with other writers who are their contemporaries (both secular and religious), the concerns they share, and the common literary and rhetorical techniques they use. This is perhaps especially true of Hilton (and for that matter, of Rolle), who addressed his writings in different tonalities to different audiences on a rather wide range of religious themes, as can be seen when both his Latin and his English writings are considered as a body. At the same time, leaving aside considerations of terminology, even as one is aware of their consequence for critical evaluation, it remains useful to consider Hilton along with Richard Rolle, the Cloud-author, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe as one of a group of fourteenth- or fifteenth-century English writers who wrote in the vernacular about the cultivation or the direct experience of contemplative life. While we should by no means elide the very considerable differences in outlook, popularity, intended audience, and technique that

4 5 6

English, ed. Albert E. Hartung, vol. 9 (New Haven, 1993), pp. 3074–82 [hereafter cited as Lagorio–Sargent]. See Clark–Dorward, p. 15. The term is used as the descriptive section heading of the treatment of the five in Lagorio–Sargent, p. 3051. See Nicholas Watson, ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature , ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 539–65. Watson proposes the term ‘vernacular theology’; see his ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), pp. 822–64.

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exist among them, or ignore distinctions of gender, one can see that their writings express and define a particular historical moment in late-medieval English society when interiority in religious life was being explored and promoted in ways that it had not been before the fourteenth century. In a wider European context, England is not alone. There are parallel developments, especially in Germany (Eckhart, Suso, Tauler), in France (Margaret of Porete), in the Low Countries (Ruysbroek, and later the movement known as the devotio moderna). The fourteenth century seems in some respects to have been a ‘golden age’ of mysticism and devotional writing. There is a widespread European interest in the practice and techniques of contemplation and in the recording of visionary and mystical experiences.7 At the same time, there is also a concern, which can be found in Hilton, about the validity of such experiences and how they might be authenticated. The controversies surrounding the visions of Bridget of Sweden (d.1373) and Catherine of Siena (d.1380) are an indication of this, as is the culminating response embodied in the treatise of Jean Gerson (d.1429) De discretione spirituum (On the Discretion of Spirits), which proposes stringent criteria for determining whether mystical experiences were divinely inspired or not. 8 The familiar designation of Hilton as a mystic is especially crippling in his case because it tends to invite attention to his private spiritual life (about which he says very little),9 and, more importantly, because it abstracts him from a highly contested religious environment in which he seems to have been actively engaged, as witnessed by his so-called minor works, especially the Latin ones. One can readily accept the prime importance of the ‘mystical’ Scale of Perfection among his works, and still insist on the importance of reading even that work within a specific late fourteenth-century social milieu. The 1380s appear to have been an especially crucial time. Wycliffite (or Lollard) challenges to tenets of orthodox belief seemed to be reaching a crisis point, which provoked an increasingly stronger response from the established church. J. P. H. Clark notes that in 1388 the Prior of Hilton’s house of Thurgarton ‘was authorized, with others, to arrest, examine, and imprison heretics’.10 It seems reasonable to suppose that Hilton’s Latin writings in defence of orthodox beliefs on the role of images in devotion and the value of a vowed religious life belong to this period, when the traditional positions of the Church on these matters were being actively questioned by followers of Wycliffe. In Book II of the Scale (chapter 7), Hilton seems to respond directly to the Wycliffite contention that confession to a priest is neither a necessary obligation for the faithful, nor an especially helpful practice. Without specifically

7 8

See the essay in this volume by Bhattacharji. On Bridget and Catherine, see Valerie Lagorio, ‘The Medieval Continental Women Mystics’, in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Paul Szarmach (Albany, 1984), pp. 181–91; for Gerson, see Jo Ann McNamara, ‘The Rhetoric of Orthodoxy: Clerical Authority and Female Innovation in the Struggle with Heresy’, in Maps of Flesh and Light: The Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics, ed. Ulrike Wiethaus (Syracuse, 1993), pp. 9–27, esp. pp. 24–7. 9 See Clark–Dorward, p. 163 n. 29; Scale, I.9 (Bestul, p. 39); I.16 (Bestul, p. 47); I.92 (Bestul, p. 133). 10 Clark–Dorward, p. 16.

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identifying any opponent (‘thanne erreth he greteli’), Hilton sharply rejects this position and affirms the importance of the orthodox sacramental system.11 Hilton engages other religious issues that were a concern of his time in a number of important ways. His English work, Of Angel’s Song, and especially chapters 10 and 26 of Book I of the Scale of Perfection, take up the matter of the true nature of the contemplative experience, particularly the role the body plays in such an experience. Hilton seems to respond directly to the ideas on the fire of love expounded in the works of Richard Rolle (d.1349), who suggested that in certain cases the love of God could be felt bodily by a person committed to the contemplative life. Unlike Rolle, Hilton strongly rejects any notion that bodily sensations of whatever kind have anything to do with contemplation. Hilton never names Rolle, but his use of some of Rolle’s favourite terms, such as the fire of love as a glowing fire or warmth felt in the breast, make it clear that he has Rolle in mind. The fire of love is real, according to Hilton, but it is not physical nor can it be felt physically. Only the simple believe that because it is called ‘fire’ it should be experienced as bodily warmth. At the other end of the spectrum, in Book II of the Scale (especially chapters 24–27), Hilton seems to respond to ideas on the ‘via negativa’ (or negative way) set forth in the Cloud of Unknowing, ideas that stress the necessity of leaving behind not just physical sensations, but any kind of mental or imaginative images altogether in order to attain the highest reaches of contemplation. Hilton appears to adopt some of the language of darkness and light from the Cloud-author, but proposes a quite different definition of the ‘good’ darkness than is found in the Cloud.12 For Hilton, the darkness is not an emptying of the soul of all that is bodily or material (as in the Cloud), but a transitional state in which sin is rejected, but the full light of God is not yet experienced. Throughout his writings Hilton maintains a belief, rooted in centuries of orthodox teaching, in the value of the imagination in the conduct of the contemplative life. In general, in a time when traditional doctrines were being questioned and challenged as never before in the English Church, Hilton emerges as a staunch defender of orthodoxy by upholding the authority of the Church, asserting the importance of the priesthood and the sacraments, and following a traditional, rather moderate, view on contemplation. On the one hand, he was suspicious of newer claims, that asserted the importance of bodily manifestations in contemplation, and on the other, he was not particularly sympathetic to the exclusivity, and the denial of sensation and imagery of the via negativa, as presented in the Cloud of Unknowing, a theology which, as far as England was concerned, would have been regarded by traditionalists as a new development.

11 Scale, II.7 (Bestul, p. 146). 12 A. J. Minnis observes that Hilton has acquired a ‘smattering of the language of negative theology, but

a smattering is all it is’; see ‘The Cloud of Unknowing and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, in Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres , ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New Brunswick, 1984), p. 73; see also A. J. Minnis, ‘Affection and Imagination in The Cloud of Unknowing and Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, Traditio 29 (1983), p. 363. J. P. H. Clark goes so far as to suggest that the Cloud responds in part to Book I of the Scale, and that Book II of the Scale was influenced by the Cloud; see ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, p. 273.

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While Hilton’s work must be contextualised with the writings of the other so-called leading Middle English mystics and be read against the background of late fourteenth-century religious controversies, it is also important to situate Hilton within a more comprehensive late fourteenth-century literary and cultural environment that includes Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and the Gawainpoet, as well as Wycliffe and his followers. Connections between Hilton and such a diverse group of writers are not always easy to discern – a response to the challenges to the established order raised by Lollardy is one obvious link to some of them, notably Gower and Langland, and to a lesser extent Chaucer. A shared concern for interiority may be too diffuse and generalised to be of much analytical use. It may be more profitable to see these writers together from the point of view of their vernacularity.13 Like all of them, Hilton is an able practitioner of the vernacular, who recognises or seems to take for granted the value of writing in English to meet specified rhetorical aims within defined social or religious contexts. Like Gower, Chaucer, and Langland, he was a full participant in the multi-lingual environment of late-medieval England. He chooses quite naturally and appropriately to write in the Latin of the dominant ecclesiastical culture in circumstances where it would be called for, most notably in the polemical writings in epistolary form. His Scale of Perfection was translated early into Latin, possibly within Hilton’s lifetime.14 He moves easily between Latin and English discourse realms.15 Watson makes the interesting observation that of his contemporaries who wrote on contemplation, ‘it was probably Hilton who best understood the problems of mediation involved in writing in the vernacular’.16 His temperate tone and the supple clarity of his prose style bespeak an alertness to the needs of an audience that is likely to have felt more secure in receiving instruction in English as opposed to Latin. The Scale of Perfection should also be situated in a diachronic context of other writings produced by the late-medieval Western Church in Latin and the vernaculars. In its didactic program, its concern for spiritual progress, and its attentiveness to the cultivation of the interior life, it belongs to a long tradition of manuals and spiritual guides, a tradition that flourished in earnest beginning in the twelfth century. Many of these works are addressed to women: among them are the De Institutione Inclusarum (Rule of Life for Recluses) of Aelred of Rievaulx (d.1167) and the thirteenth-century English Ancrene Wisse (Guide for Anchoresses).17 While in certain significant ways the Scale belongs to a type of 13 This is Watson’s emphasis; see Cambridge History, pp. 539–44. 14 Clark–Dorward, p. 18; translation into Latin, of course, made the work accessible to a European as

well as a local English audience. For a list of the Latin manuscripts, some of which circulated on the Continent, see Lagorio–Sargent, p. 3431. 15 Further evidence of this is provided if one accepts the suggestion sometimes made that Hilton was responsible for the Middle English translation of the Latin Stimulus amoris of James of Milan; see Clark–Dorward, pp. 16–17. Hilton’s authorship of the translation, however, is quite uncertain. 16 Watson, Cambridge History, p. 555. 17 For a Middle English version of Aelred, see Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum: Two Middle English Translations, ed. John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, EETS OS 287 (Oxford, 1984); modern English translation in Aelred of Rievaulx, Treatises and the Pastoral Prayer , trans. Theodore Berkeley, Mary Paul Macpherson, and R. Penelope Lawson, Cistercian Fathers Series 2 (Kalamazoo, 1971). For information on the many versions of the Ancrene Wisse, see Ancrene Wisse, ed. Robert Hasenfratz (Kalamazoo, 2000).

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ecclesiastical writing known as pastoralia, or writings designed to assist priests in the carrying out of their pastoral duties, in some ways it is very different. Watson notes that the focus of pastoralia is on what is necessary for salvation, not, as in the Scale, on how perfect spiritual life might be realised within earthly limitations.18 Joseph Milosh considers the Scale in relation to what he calls ‘the religious handbook tradition’ (a tradition which, if not identical with, has many points of contact with pastoralia), and argues that the instruction in works of this kind has a practical emphasis that is best seen as preceding the more advanced teaching on contemplation in such works as the Scale.19 Perhaps more closely related are works written within monastic contexts that are more narrowly focused on the attainment of spiritual perfection, some of which make use of the stair or journey metaphor to denote stages in growth. Notable examples are the Scala claustralium (The Ladder of Monks) of Guigo II of Chartreuse (d.1188), and the extremely influential Itinerarium mentis ad deum (Journey of the Mind to God) of Bonaventure (d.1274).20 The Scale of Perfection exists in two books, with a complicated textual history and manuscript tradition, the details of which need not detain us. It is important to note, however, that some manuscripts have Book I only, a smaller number have Book II only, and others (the largest number) contain both books. It is commonly thought that Book I was composed first and circulated independently, and that Book II, which revisits many of the same topics in Book I in greater depth, was written later and added to make the complete treatise. The large number of manuscripts shows that the work was popular and widely read into the sixteenth century. It was the first of the classical works of English mysticism to appear as a printed book, in 1494. 21 The manuscript evidence also suggests that the Scale was a crossover success, quickly appealing to a range of audiences, lay and clerical, specialised and non-specialised in spiritual sophistication and understanding. Among readers with advanced knowledge of the theories and techniques of contemplation, one may count James Grenehalgh, a Carthusian of Sheen, who annotated more than one copy. We know that other manuscripts of the Scale were owned by several Carthusian houses, and that in the fifteenth century the work was available to the Bridgettine nuns of Syon Abbey.22 In speaking of lay audiences 18 Watson, Cambridge History, p. 549. 19 Joseph Milosh, The Scale of Perfection and the English Mystical Tradition (Madison, 1966),

pp. 140–68. 20 Guigo of Chartreuse, Scala claustralium, PL 184: 475–84; English translation by Edmund Colledge

and James Walsh in The Ladder of Monks: A Letter on the Contemplative Life and Twelve Meditations by Guigo II, Cistercian Studies Series 48 (Kalamazoo, 1981); the Itinerarium is in The Works of Bonaventure, I: Mystical Opuscula, trans. José de Vinck (Paterson, NJ, 1960), pp. 1–58. 21 See The Scale of Perfection, trans. Evelyn Underhill (London, 1923), p. vi; Helen Gardner, ‘The Text of The Scale of Perfection’, Medium Ævum 5 (1936), p. 11. See Lagorio–Sargent, p. 3431, for the several early printed editions that follow from the 1494 editio princeps of Wynkyn de Worde. Underhill (The Scale, p. xxix) claims that in the fifteenth century the Scale ‘was the most widely read of English devotional works’. 22 See Clark–Dorward, p. 33; Michael Sargent, ‘Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered’, Medium Ævum 52 (1983), pp. 189–216, esp. pp. 189–90; Michael Sargent, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976), pp. 225–40; Ann Hutchison, ‘What the Nuns Read: Literary Evidence from the English Bridgettine House, Syon Abbey’, Mediaeval Studies 57 (1995),

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for Middle English religious texts, it is well to be specific about what is meant. The laity who read Hilton seem almost exclusively to have been the aristocracy and members of the urban merchant middle class. Margery Kempe, whose father had been mayor of Lynn, is a notable representative of the latter group. Kempe mentions ‘Hyltons boke’ along with other classics of late-medieval spirituality with which she professes familiarity.23 John Killum, a London grocer who died in 1416, owned a manuscript with a complete text of the Scale and other works of Hilton.24 Aristocratic readers included Margaret Beaufort (d.1509), mother of Henry VII (about whom more later).25 Several reasons for the popularity of the Scale have been proposed. Although Book I is addressed specifically to a woman who had taken religious vows, Hilton a number of times generalises his instruction to apply to ‘ony othir man or woman’ leading a contemplative life in a religious community.26 In addition, Book II of the Scale has, as Clark notes, a wider application of who might participate in the contemplative life, whereas in Book I it is restricted to cloistered religious.27 Hilton’s practicality and moderation have also been mentioned, as has a ‘concern with lesser mortals’ manifest in all his writings. 28 The Scale is essentially a guide addressed to vowed contemplatives advising them on how to attain perfection in the conduct of the contemplative life. The title, the Scale of Perfection, or in its Latin form, Scala perfectionis, is found in several manuscripts. The ‘scale’ of the title has its proximate Latin meaning of ladder or staircase, but it is interesting that in the work itself practically nothing is made of the ladder metaphor as an indication of spiritual progress.29 It should not be assumed that this title is necessarily Hilton’s own designation for the treatise. In some manuscripts the work is untitled, and in others it bears such titles as De vita contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life) or the Reformyng of Mannys Soule, titles that are at least as apt or descriptive as the Scale of Perfection.30 Lying at the root of the Scale’s teaching are two fundamental concepts that developed in the patristic age but belong to the general heritage of the medieval Church. The first of these is a distinction between the active and the contemplative lives as two forms of living in which a Christian could serve God. The active and contemplative lives were often distinguished within the clerical order itself: those who had pastoral or administrative duties (such as parish priests,

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

pp. 205–22; Rebecca Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, 2002), pp. 155–66. The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004), ch. 17, p. 115. See Clark–Dorward, p. 33; complete information on Killum’s manuscript is in Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life Edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472 , ed. S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson (Salzburg, 1986), pp. xii-xiv. Lagorio–Sargent, p. 3077; Krug, Leading Families, pp. 102–3. The example quoted is from Scale, I.92 (Bestul, p. 133). Clark–Dorward, p. 52; see Scale, II.27 (Bestul, p. 196) for a more inclusive interpretation of who might participate in the contemplative life. Clark–Dorward, p. 41; Watson, Cambridge History, pp. 542–3; Minnis, ‘The Cloud’ (1984), p. 70 (the quoted words are from Minnis, loc. cit.). The single example is found in Scale, II.17 (Bestul, p. 167); see Clark–Dorward, p. 308 n. 82. For the alternative titles, see Clark–Dorward, p. 19.

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abbots or bishops) were considered actives, with the designation contemplative reserved for those living a vowed religious life devoted exclusively to prayer and meditation. Laity involved in worldly affairs were necessarily considered actives. The classic discussion of the two lives is found in the Homilies on Ezekiel of Gregory the Great. In the New Testament, Gregory tells us, the active and contemplative lives are exemplified by the lives of Martha and Mary, respectively; in the Old Testament, Leah indicates the active life and Rachel the contemplative.31 The contemplative life was considered superior to the active, a view supported by Christ’s words to Martha that Mary had chosen the better part (Luke 10: 42). In the later Middle Ages, an alternate view developed that a mixed life, one that combined elements of both the active and the contemplative, had a claim to be considered the highest expression of Christian life. This view was especially associated with the religious order to which Hilton belonged at the end of his life, the Augustinian canons, who were founded expressly to combine the best elements of the cloistered life and active ministry.32 Hilton’s care to define the contemplative life against other forms of living and to take up the question of who might be called to it perhaps reveals a characteristic Augustinian concern, but if so it was a concern that was shared widely throughout the late-medieval Church. The other fundamental idea provides the theological underpinning of both books of the Scale, giving it a sturdy Augustinian flavour. This is what has been termed image theology, a theology which, in the Middle Ages, found its classic expression in the works of Augustine.33 The soul of man, made in the image of God, has been distorted from its true likeness by original sin and its consequences. The goal of a Christian is to restore that image or reform it to its true likeness, a restoration and reformation that is made possible by the gift of God’s grace and Christ’s redeeming sacrifice. Aided by grace, man can begin the reformation process here on earth, but because of man’s sinful nature, complete recapture of the image of God can never be achieved in this earthly life, but only in Heaven. Augustine’s teachings on the renewal of the soul, in turn, are based on doctrines of Paul, expressed notably in the call to reformation issued in Romans 12: 2, and in the admonition of Ephesians 4: 22–3 to put off the old sinful man and put on the new man created like God in justice and holiness. In his own exposition, Hilton frequently quotes passages from the Pauline epistles, including the verses just mentioned. 34 Book I of the Scale is divided into 92 chapters, many of which are very brief.35 Book II, in contrast, has only 46 chapters, even though it is longer than 31 Gregory, Homiliae in Ezechielem 2.2.7–12 (PL 76: 952–5; Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 142:

229–33). 32 On the Augustinian canons, see J. C. Dickinson, The Origins of the Austin Canons and their Introduc-

tion into England (London, 1950); Caroline Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982), pp. 22–58. 33 On image theology, see J. P. H. Clark, ‘Augustine, Anselm and Walter Hilton’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England II, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1982), pp. 102–26. 34 See especially Scale, II.31 (Bestul, p. 211). 35 A further complexity is that the chapter divisions are not the same in all manuscripts: see S. S. Hussey, ‘Editing The Scale of Perfection: Return to Recension’, in Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism, ed. A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer (Cambridge, 1992), p. 106.

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Book I by almost a quarter. The difference is more than superficial: in Book I, ideas are seldom developed in depth, or lingered over for very long, so that the discussion seems not to flow, but to hop from stone to stone. The organisation, however, is not haphazard, although it can be difficult for the beginning reader to grasp.36 In Book II, especially in the middle sections of the book, some of the same topics treated in the first book (notably the reformation of the soul) are analysed at length and with much greater profundity. This seemingly greater maturity in approach is the best internal evidence for the supposition that the two books were written at different times in Hilton’s life. Book I begins with an address to the ‘goostli suster in Jhesu Crist’, for whom the work was ostensibly written, encouraging her to remain steadfast in her vocation as an enclosed anchorite. Hilton then goes on to define the active and the contemplative lives (chapters 2–9). The contemplative life is subdivided into three forms. The first consists in knowledge of God through reason and learning only and the second in knowing God in the affections (or emotions) only. The second part of contemplation is then subdivided into two parts, a lower part, when men who are active feel occasional, but not necessarily lasting, fervours of love for God; and a higher part that occurs only as the result of long travail, both bodily and spiritual, when a more or less stable period of spiritual tranquillity is achieved. Finally, the third level of contemplation, the highest stage attainable on earth, lies in knowing God in both cognition and affection. This occurs when the soul is cleansed of sin and reformed to the image of Jesus, and is the perfection spoken of in the title of the work. Hilton states his belief that the highest level of contemplation can be obtained only by a solitary leading a contemplative life (chapter 9), a restrictive view he moderates in Book II.37 Hilton then warns of impediments, stressing that visions or revelations have nothing to do with sensory feelings, and underlining the importance of distinguishing between good and evil bodily sensations. True contemplation is initiated by humility, certain faith, and a whole intention toward God, followed by reading of the Bible, meditation, and prayer (chapters 12–41). The last part of the book addresses the greatest need of a contemplative: the need to break down the ground of sin within the soul. Hilton emphasises the importance of the soul’s being restored to its original dignity, which it lost through Adam’s sin. The destruction of sin is necessary for man to regain the divine image. The restoration is made possible by Christ’s Passion and God’s grace. Following Augustine’s De trinitate , Hilton enumerates the three powers of the soul (intellect, reason, and will), which correspond to the three persons of the Trinity. In an important chapter, Hilton affirms that even though he writes specifically for an enclosed anchorite, the salvation made possible by Christ is open to all believers (chapter 44). The final chapters analyse the different varieties of sin, with advice on how they are to be overcome, following the traditional teaching on the seven deadly sins. Sin is described as a ‘myrke image’ 36 The structure of Book I is discussed and clarified in Michael Sargent, ‘The Organization of the Scale

of Perfection’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition II, ed. Glasscoe (Exeter, 1982), pp. 231–61; good summaries of both books are found in Lagorio–Sargent, pp. 3075–6. 37 See above, note 27.

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(‘dark image’, chapter 84), which must be destroyed before reformation of the soul to the image of Jesus can take place. Some references are made to the particular circumstances of an anchorite, but the doctrine is widely applicable to anyone who would lead an exemplary Christian life, as Hilton seems to state. There is a very strong emphasis, articulated in Pauline metaphors, on reforming the soul to the divine image through the rejection of sin and fervent desire for Jesus. Hilton devotes several chapters to how Jesus is to be sought, desired, and found (chapters 46–51). The last chapter of the book recapitulates the purpose of the whole and generalises its application: it is written to encourage the addressee or any other man or woman who has undertaken the contemplative life to continue in the pursuit of perfection. Hilton’s second book is narrower in focus, dealing with a smaller number of topics, but in greater detail, and more comprehensibly arranged into 46 chapters. There is a much fuller discussion of the image theology found in the first book. The opening sentence of the first chapter responds to a putative request from the person to whom the Scale is addressed for more information on the subject: ‘For as moche as thou coveitest greteli and askest it pur charité for to heere more of an image the whiche y have bifore tymes in partie discried to thee, therfore I wole glaadli with drede falle to thi desire.’38 A sign of the greater depth of treatment is Hilton’s employment of the doctrine of atonement established in Anselm’s Cur deus homo (which is used without acknowledgment) to make the point that only through the Passion of Christ can the image of man be restored to the divine (chapter 2).39 Other theologically complex matters dealt with are the number of the elect, where Hilton again follows Anselm (his De concordia), and the vexed question of the salvation of the heathen.40 On the latter topic, Hilton characteristically adopts a strict orthodox viewpoint, affirming, against the opinions of some, that there is no salvation outside the Church. Jews and pagans, no matter how virtuous their lives, and no matter how faithfully they practise their religion, cannot be saved. Complete reformation of the image of God in the soul cannot be had in this life; only partial reformation is possible. This partial reformation consists of two kinds, reformation in faith, and reformation in faith and feeling. The first of these applies to beginning souls and to active men; the second applies to perfect souls and contemplative men. The second type of reformation is better than the first. It destroys the old feeling of the image of sin and brings new spiritual feelings through the workings of the Holy Ghost. The reformation in feeling fully engages the emotions of love and desire for God. Exhibiting his staunch sacramental and institutional bias, Hilton explains that the image of sin is destroyed in us by the sacraments of baptism (for original sin) and penance (for actual sin). It is here that Hilton specifically rejects the Wycliffite proposition that confession to a priest is not necessary or useful (chapter 7). He also condemns the theological error, associated with the heresy of the free spirit current in his 38 Scale, II.1 (Bestul, p. 134). 39 See Clark–Dorward, p. 303 n. 3. 40 See Book II, chs 4 and 3, respectively (Bestul, pp. 138–42); for the use of Anselm, De concordia, see

Clark–Dorward, p. 304 n. 13.

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time, that God is so merciful that he will condemn no one (chapter 10).41 At the same time, Hilton forcefully proclaims the principal of universal salvation, which applies to the simple as well as the perfect. Hilton elaborates on the ways the soul is reformed in both faith and feeling, the highest state possible for man to attain on earth. The soul reformed in faith and feeling follows the higher part of reason in beholding God and heavenly things. Repeating a point made in Book I, Hilton declares that reformation in faith and feeling is not acquired suddenly, but through God’s grace, with much travail, both bodily and spiritual (chapter 17). The difficulty of achieving this state is explained through the metaphor of a pilgrim making an arduous journey to Jerusalem, a metaphor that is sustained through several chapters (21–26). In this voyage sin must be resisted; the blocking out of sin means the rejection of the false light that is the attractiveness of the things of this world. When this happens, the soul falls into a state of darkness, which is, paradoxically, the ‘good night’ or the ‘lightli myrkenesse’ (‘luminous darkness’) that prepares one for the true day and the true light of Jesus (chapter 24). This good darkness is the gateway to contemplation and reformation in feeling as well as faith. Without reformation in feeling one cannot truly experience the gift of contemplation. In a key chapter (chapter 30), Hilton stresses how important it is for a man to know his own soul; self-knowledge is necessary before any kind of knowledge above the self can be attained. Hilton goes on to talk of the different ways of knowing God and how reformation in feeling is achieved, making extensive use of Pauline ideas on reformation and renewal. Grace opens the inner eye of the soul to beholding of Jesus. This beholding of Jesus, in its higher stages, has nothing to do with concrete images formed in the imagination, such as a vision of Jesus enthroned in majesty in the heavens. Recapitulating a position taken in Book I, Hilton concedes that images of this kind suffice for simple souls, but not for the perfect. In the latter chapters of Book II Hilton spends much time on defining and stressing the importance of love for Jesus as a way that the spiritual eye can be opened. The opening of the inner eye to a knowledge of the Godhead enables contemplation and is another way of expressing the reformation of the soul in faith and feeling. Although special grace may be withdrawn from time to time, love makes possible the reformation of the soul and quells our impulses (‘stirrings’, as Hilton calls them) to sin. In a more positive sense, the opening of the spiritual eye allows us to understand the Scriptures, makes us humbly wise and receptive to the operations of the Holy Church, can give us an understanding of man’s proper role, and, finally, grants to the soul a little insight into the mysteries of the Trinity. In a conclusion to the book that echoes the ending of the Gospel of John, Hilton holds out for the contemplative an endless range of possibilities of spiritual illumination, more ‘than myght be writen in a grete book’.42

41 Clark–Dorward, pp. 29–30. 42 Scale, II.46 (Bestul, p. 261); cf. John 21: 25.

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As noted above, Hilton’s Scale seems to have been widely read by both lay and clerical audiences. Hilton’s moderate tone, systematic practicality, and the encouraging openness of his advice must have been broadly appealing. His mainstream, middle of the road spirituality, his rejection of potentially troublesome bodily manifestations as well as his eschewal of the more abstract doctrines of mystical union, and perhaps above all his rigorous defence of sacramental orthodoxy and allegiance to the institutional church, would have made him a comfortable guide for those who were interested in knowing more about or following for themselves the contemplative life. The Scale would allow them a way of participating in the higher reaches of the newly invigorated devotional life of Northern Europe within the confines of orthodox belief and relieve them from possible anxieties about wandering into heresy. As we know, in the generally troubled climate of late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England, the extirpation of heresy and the defence of orthodoxy were foremost concerns. In this anxious environment missteps could have mortal consequences. Hilton’s book perhaps found so many readers because it successfully managed to speak to the profoundest spiritual aspirations at the same time as it offered authentic safety and security along the way. The very blandness that has made Hilton less interesting to modern scholars than his more colourful contemporaries Rolle, Julian, or Kempe, may have been a source of strength in his own time.43 Hilton’s inchoate idea, chiefly found in Book II of the Scale, that contemplation may be open to others than those in religious orders, is fully articulated in a remarkable treatise On the Mixed Life, a brief guide addressed specifically to a layman living in the world who has responsibility for others. The Mixed Life takes up many of the points of the Scale, in reduced form. It begins, for example, with traditional definitions of the active and contemplative lives, but places special emphasis on the mixed life, which combines aspects of both forms of living. Here the traditional application of the mixed life as a status belonging to prelates of the Church is generalised to temporal men who have sovereignty over other men, as a father over children, a master over servants, or a lord over tenants. Hilton affirms that the contemplative life is best, but for those who are charged with administrative duties, then the mixed life is best. Christ himself, Hilton notes, led the mixed life.44 For a person engaged in worldly affairs, Hilton recommends affective devotion to the Passion and meditation on Christ and his works. Practical advice is given about turning to one’s prayers and devotions only after worldly business is conducted, and not becoming angry if children or others should interrupt them. The layperson is urged to use moderation and discretion in the conduct of the devotional life, not neglecting the demands of worldly duties, nor depriving oneself of food or sleep.45 All things have their season. Hilton also stresses the 43 See Clark–Dorward, p. 35; Watson notes that ‘it is tempting to see Hilton . . . as lacking much of the

individuality of his contemporaries’, Cambridge History, p. 555; on the appeal to the laity of Hilton’s ‘middle path’, see Krug, Reading Families, p. 105. 44 The Mixed Life, ed. Ogilvie-Thomson (see above note 24), pp. 15, 17, 21. For the two lives and the laity, see R. N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215–c.1515 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 105–6, 125–6. 45 The Mixed Life, Ogilvie-Thomson, pp. 66–67.

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importance of not forcing devotion – if the gift of contemplation does not arrive after a reasonable time, one should accept what one can, go on to some other thought, and try again on another occasion. Over-striving, Hilton warns, can lead to error. The best policy is to follow set forms of devotion, such as saying the pater noster, or reciting matins, or reading the Psalter.46 In that way one can avoid being beguiled into error, which happens when a man in his presumption pries into spiritual matters beyond his reach, unless he is properly aided by grace. The Mixed Life has been called ‘an eminently practical manual’, and it is not hard to see why it would have enjoyed a wide readership.47 Its innovative quality should not be disregarded. Hilton is apparently the first person writing in England to extend the Gregorian concept of the mixed life to the laity.48 The work may be seen as a conscious effort on Hilton’s part to take into account the contemplative aspirations of lay people by providing them an appropriate guide in the form of a ‘lite’ version of the Scale. These innovating impulses, however, are perhaps best seen as a mark of Hilton’s conservatism, in that the Mixed Life holds out to laity not full participation in the higher kind of contemplative life described in the Scale, but a decidedly selective version of that life, one that pointedly allows for no disturbance of or radical modification to the traditional obligations belonging to the lay estate. Margery Kempe, for example, would have found its advice confining.49 The treatise may have been written less in a spirit of ecumenical generosity than to control what Hilton may have perceived as misguided tendencies among laity eager to participate in the contemplative life.50 Furthermore, a manual such as the Mixed Life might divert lay people from the improper use of works intended not for them but for members of religious orders. From an orthodox point of view, of course, such efforts can be seen as only constructive. It is interesting that just as the Scale was read by laity although addressed to a person in religious orders, so the Mixed Life was read by religious even though written for a layman. The work was not nearly so successful as the Scale of Perfection, but the manuscript tradition shows that copies were owned by the London Poor Clares and possibly Syon Abbey, as well as being present along with the Scale of Perfection in the ‘common profit’ book of the fifteenthcentury London grocer, John Killum, whom we have mentioned above.51 46 Ibid., Ogilvie-Thomson, p. 62. 47 The characterisation is by J. P. H. Clark; quoted in Ogilvie-Thomson, The Mixed Life, p. viii n. 2. 48 See Clark–Dorward, p. 42; Ogilvie-Thomson, The Mixed Life, pp. ix–x; Watson, Cambridge History,

p. 556; Watson notes that the Speculum ecclesie of Edmund Rich (d.1240) is ‘an important precursor’, p. 556 n. 54. 49 One cannot be sure of the referent of ‘Hyltons boke’ mentioned by Kempe (1.17; ed. Windeatt, p. 115), but since it appears in a roll call of major spiritual classics, it seems likely that she is speaking of Hilton’s magnum opus, the Scale. 50 Such anxieties over lay piety are more overt in Hilton’s Epistola ad quemdam seculo renuntiare volentem; see Walter Hilton’s Latin Writings , ed. John P. H. Clark and Cheryl Taylor, 2 vols, Analecta Cartusiana 124 (Salzburg, 1987), 2: 289–92; Clark–Dorward, p. 17. See also S. S. Hussey, ‘Langland, Hilton, and the Three Lives’, Review of English Studies n.s. 7 (1956), pp. 132–50; Hussey, ‘Walter Hilton: Traditionalist?’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England I, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1980), pp. 1–16. 51 Ogilvie-Thomson, pp. xii–xvii; Lagorio–Sargent, pp. 3433–4; see above, note 24.

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Lagorio and Sargent, observing that the Mixed Life and the Scale often travelled together in the manuscripts, suggest that the former work ‘appears to have been used by early fifteenth-century lay readers of the Scale to adapt that work’s more strictly contemplative emphasis to their own state of life’.52 One such reader was Cicely Neville, duchess of York (d.1495).53 An indication of the value placed by the laity on Hilton’s Mixed Life is provided by the aristocrat Margaret Beaufort (whom we have already mentioned), who apparently stipulated that it be added to the edition of the Scale prepared and printed for her by Wynkyn de Worde in 1494.54 The inclusion of a treatise directly aimed at the laity presumably would have increased the marketability of de Worde’s book. Hilton’s contribution to the religious life of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England is major and pivotal. His writings on contemplation spoke directly to a devotional fervour that cut across distinctions of gender and social or religious status. He succeeded in appealing to lay and religious audiences of considerable diversity through a centrist approach that promoted lofty spiritual ambitions within the safe boundaries of institutional orthodoxy. In the turbulent fifteenth century, that was a formula that struck a responsive chord in readers as varied as the Bridgettine nuns of Syon, the Carthusian contemplative James Grenehalgh, the bourgeois Margery Kempe and James Killum, and the high aristocrats Cicely Neville and Margaret Beaufort. Few of his contemporaries shared such broad-based popularity. Chaucer and Langland come to mind, and it may not be a distortion to say that at a fundamental level the popularity of all three has a similar basis. As a central figure in the literary and religious culture of late-medieval England, Hilton continues to have a compelling claim on our attention.

52 Lagorio–Sargent, p. 3077; it is notable that the Mixed Life is found with the Scale (or extracts from it)

in three large late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century miscellanies thought to be made for lay readership, namely, the Vernon, the Simeon, and the Thornton MSS; see Lagorio–Sargent, pp. 3420–34. 53 See the account of Cicely’s devotional reading habits in W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (1955; repr. Toronto, 1980), p. 254 (I owe this reference to Mary Dzon). 54 Lagorio–Sargent, p. 3077; Krug, Reading Families, pp. 102–3; Susan Powell, ‘Lady Margaret Beaufort and Her Books’, The Library, 6th ser., 20 (1998), pp. 197–240; on Beaufort’s piety, see Swanson, Religion and Devotion, pp. 125–6.

JULIAN OF NORWICH AND HER AUDIENCE, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

8 ‘And Thou, to whom This Booke Shall Come’: Julian of Norwich and Her Audience, Past, Present and Future LIZ HERBERT MCAVOY

We have to discover a language which does not replace the bodily encounter, as paternal language attempts to do, but which can go along with it, words which do not bar the corporeal, but which speak corporeal.1

R

EADING the writing of the medieval English mystic, Julian of Norwich, is ioften problematised by the fact that very little biographical information is available to illuminate our knowledge and understanding of either the woman or her writing. Unlike the effervescent Margery Kempe, for example, or the well-documented figure of Saint Bridget of Sweden2 whose pseudo-histories and widely accessible bodily presence provide an easier inroad into their mystical writings for a student audience, Julian, as writer, as body, appears initially to remain tantalisingly beyond the margins of her own difficult texts and dense mystical theology. What we do know is largely derived from a series of local wills and some very scant information about her life, which surfaces periodically within her two accounts of a series of visions of the Passion experienced during the Spring of 1373.3 We learn, for example, that she had prayed for some kind of deeply affective experience as a young girl, becoming subject to it later at the age of thirty-and-a-half when suffering from a dangerous and paralysing illness. We also learn that she lies on the brink of death for several days 1 2

3

Luce Irigaray, ‘The Bodily Encounter with the Mother’, in The Irigaray Reader, ed. Margaret Whitford (Oxford, 1991), pp. 35–46, at p. 43. The most exhaustive study of Bridget to date is Bridget Morris, Saint Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge, 1999). For Margery Kempe’s ‘autohagiographical’ account of her own life see The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004). These accounts are known respectively as the Short Text (ST), the only witness to which is found in London, British Library Additional 37790 (the ‘Amherst Manuscript’); and the Long Text (LT), three manuscript versions of which remain, one printed version and two redactions. The edition of the ST referred to in this essay will be that of Frances Beer (ed.), Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (Heidelberg, 1978). References to the LT will be taken from Marion Glasscoe (ed.), Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love (Exeter, 1976; rev edn, 1993). For a detailed description of all the extant manuscripts of the LT, however, see Julian of Norwich: A Book of Showings, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Toronto, 1978), pp. 1–10.

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whilst the visions unfold before her eyes. This would suggest a date of birth early in 1343. Other contemporary local wills suggest that Julian did not enter the anchorhold attached to the church of Saint Julian in Norwich4 until twenty years after her visions and illness, however.5 How she lived her life until that point is unknown.6 Modern scholarship, however, which had long considered her to be a Benedictine nun, is now tending towards a reading of Julian as probably a lay woman from the gentry class or the lower nobility who had been living in a domestic setting within the world prior to enclosure.7 Such a stance, of course, inevitably has an effect upon how we read Julian’s texts, enabling us to examine them as products of a wholly embodied woman living within the world rather than a disembodied voice emerging from the more rarefied and symbolic location of enclosure. Whatever her status before her enclosure, however, it seems Julian’s life was a long one. Local wills and an incipit appearing in the earliest witness to her writing,8 as well as a documented meeting with the fellow East Anglian writer and mystic, Margery Kempe, suggest that she was still alive and living the anchoritic life in 1413. Indeed, the latter account of Julian and Margery’s body-to-body encounter in The Book of Margery Kempe provides a most helpful methodological inroad into Julian’s reputation and writing.9 By the time she met Margery, Julian had produced two written versions of her visionary experiences, now commonly referred to as the Short and Long Texts. The first appears to have been an initial response to those experiences and was a version on which she was probably working until at least the late 1380s. Towards the end of that decade, however – probably sometime in 1388 – Julian seems to have been subject to a secondary vision, which prompted her to reconsider the meaning of her visions and, as a result, she embarked upon a second, far more extensive

4

5 6

7 8

9

The best source of information about English anchoritism to date and the type of traditions that Julian would have inherited is still that of Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons in Medieval England (Los Angeles & Berkeley, 1985). On these traditions see the essays of Jones and Dyas included in this volume. On the evidence presented by local wills, see LT, pp. vii–viii. A more detailed account is to be found in Colledge and Walsh, Showings, pp. 33–5. In spite of this dearth of knowledge, some contemporary scholars have made an attempt to reconstruct a life for Julian out of a mixture of circumstantial evidence, social context and raw speculation. Although some of these do raise some interesting possibilities and questions about Julian’s early life, nevertheless, they should be used with considerable caution. For example, the recent work of Julia Bolton Holloway who is a life-long Julian scholar, while demonstrating a close affinity with the content of Julian’s writing and of the spiritual climate of contemporary East Anglia, nevertheless speculates at some length about her life. See, in particular, the introduction to her recent translation of the longer version of Julian’s experiences. Julia Bolton Holloway, Julian of Norwich: Showing of Love (Collegeville, MN, 2003). Holloway has, however, constructed the most detailed and comprehensive of Julian websites, much of which contains highly useful and assiduously collected background and contextual information. See http://www.umilta.net/. This was a suggestion first posited by Benedicta Ward who subsequently argued for it in ‘Julian the Solitary’, in Ken Leech and Benedicta Ward (eds), Julian the Solitary (Oxford, 1988), pp. 11–35. The incipit attached to the Short Text reads: ‘There es a vision schewed be the goodenes of god to a deuoute woman and hir name es Iulyan, that is recluse atte Norwyche and Zitt ys on lyfe, anno domini millesimo CCCCxiij’ (p. 39). See The Book of Margery Kempe, pp. 119–23.

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version now commonly known as the Long Text,10 which probably occupied her for the rest of her life.11 It is evident, then, that the Short Text was enjoying some kind of contemporaneous circulation during Julian’s own lifetime, and it is certainly the case that the Norwich in which she was living, for the duration of her adult life at least, would have provided a highly suitable environment for the dissemination of her writing. The city was a vibrant, developing centre, second only to London in size, wealth and population. Moreover, the high number of books bequeathed in contemporary local wills clearly demonstrates that it was also a centre of exceptional religious piety and lear ning during the period in question. 12 Working and operating within this climate, possibly as a woman within the world,13 Julian seems to have benefited considerably from the intellectual ethos of the locality. She appears, for example, to have been exceptionally well read, although she does her utmost in her Short Text to minimise her status as an educated woman. In an explicit self-derogation as ‘woman, leued, febille, & freylle’,14 for instance, while conforming to a common topos in the writing of both medieval men and women, Julian nevertheless betrays a need to defend herself against accusations of socially unorthodox behaviour – never mind heterodox religious sentiment. Similarly, in the same text she also denies her own role as teacher: ‘Botte god forbede that
e schulde saye or take it so that I am a techere, for I meene nou
t soo.’15 In spite of these somewhat disingenuous protestations to the contrary, however, the entire body of Julian’s writing testifies to a high level of education and learning, hinting perhaps at origins within the upper echelons of the urban gentry or lesser aristocracy.16 Indeed, work to date on the anchoritic life in England has revealed that female anchorites tended to be drawn from these very classes of the laity within the urban centres, rather than from the religious orders, as was the case with men.17 This, of course, provides circumstantial corroboration – although certainly not proof – that Julian may have been a married laywoman living in the world who possibly entered the anchorhold upon widowhood, as was the case with so many other English female anchorites from the upper strata of society.

10 Colledge and Walsh have usefully brought both of these versions together in their Julian of Norwich:

11

12 13

14 15 16 17

A Book of Showings. Although some of the editors’ conclusions have now been modified or rejected, nevertheless their assiduous research into manuscript production and preservation continues to be of great benefit to the modern scholar. On this see their introduction pp. 1–3. The dating of these texts has recently been reappraised by Nicholas Watson, whose subsequent redating of them is now generally accepted. See Nicholas Watson, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum 68 (1993), pp. 637–83. On Norwich as a centre of education and learning in the late Middle Ages, see Norman P. Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich 1370–1532 (Toronto, 1984), especially pp. 28–42. For recent relevant works on the lives of medieval women in England, see in particular Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 400–1500 (London, 1995); Jennifer Ward, Women of the English Nobility and Gentry 1066–1500 (Manchester, 1995); P. J. P. Goldberg, Women in England 1275–1525 (Manchester, 1995). ST, p. 48. Ibid., pp. 47–8. This is something posited by Alexandra Barratt in ‘Julian of Norwich and the Holy Spirit: “Our Good Lord” ’, Mystics Quarterly 28, 2 (2002), pp. 78–84. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons , p. 22.

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The possibility of such a status is also borne out in much of the language used by Julian within her writing which, in spite of its intensely mystical content, draws heavily upon the material world of objects and bodies for its exposition. Highly memorable everyday domestic objects make their presence felt, for example – the scales on a herring, the burnished terracotta roof-tiles during an East Anglian downpour, the kitchen measure of an opened hazelnut shell – and throughout, Julian’s vocabulary tends to place them within the context of an increasingly commercial society in which everything, even salvation, had become subject to the pressures of the marketplace. In both texts, for instance, she makes concerted use of the lexis of purchase and debt, continually reconfiguring the relationship between Christ and humanity as one that is essentially transactional. Not only has Christ ‘bawte us from endless peynys of helle’,18 but his Passion and compassion ‘shal al be turnyd to worshippe and profite’.19 Elsewhere, too, she articulates the reciprocity and mutual gain that she sees as lying at the heart of divine love in terms of a commercial transaction that leaves both partners entirely satisfied. As Christ reassures Julian, ‘ “If thou art payde, I am payde.” ’20 Here, the satisfaction experienced by both the Christian and Christ through this exchange of love not only uses the language of the marketplace as hermeneutic tool, but is also extended to help identify the overarching links between sin, love, sacrifice and salvation that form the main focus of the work: Furthermore he leryd that I should beholde the glorious asyeth, for this asyeth making is more plesyng to God and more worshipfull for manys salvation, without comparison, than ever was the synne of Adam harmfull.21

Most notable in this context is the repeated use Julian makes of the word ‘asyeth’ in her writing, a word that can be translated as ‘satisfaction’, but which also invites consideration of its conglomerate meanings of ‘atonement’, ‘sufficiency’ and ‘purchase’.22 Thus, in her adoption of words that evoke a contemporary marketplace and mercantile ethic, Julian articulates in everyday terms her mystical insight into the transactionary relationship between a Christian and God, a transaction that is again built upon the mutuality of love and the concomitant self-sacrifice of selves and bodies. Although she is, of course, by no means the first writer to make use of such vocabulary,23 Julian certainly deploys it in a manner that is, in many ways, deeply unorthodox, drawing on the language of the marketplace in order to 18 LT, p. 34. 19 Ibid., p. 40. 20 Ibid., p. 31. Although Colledge and Walsh gloss the word ‘apayde’ as ‘satisfied’ in this instance

(p. 382) the term’s cognate meaning of ‘to satisfy a debt’ is also implicated, rendering Christ’s suffering for humanity a type of economic principle that is of benefit to both giver and recipient, with salvation and unity as the ultimate goals. 21 LT, pp. 40–1. 22 This is an aspect of Julian’s language that has been examined in part by Ritamary Bradley, ‘Julian of Norwich: Everyone’s Mystic’, in William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (eds), Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 139–58. 23 As early as the third century, for example, Saint Ambrose made use of such vocabulary in order to

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contemporise and make accessible the complex issues that she is attempting to articulate. This she also effects by means of a highly individual use of the notion of ‘profit’, a particularly useful hermeneutic within a social setting that had come to extol the virtues of financial gain, and within a religious climate that still tended to revile it – rhetorically, at least. This is entirely typical of Julian’s ability to reconcile apparently irreconcilable opposites in her writing. Typically, she uses concepts from the ordinary, secular and material world around her and then proceeds to bring about their interaction with the mystical in order to make it accessible for her ‘evencristen’. Moreover, by these same means, such concepts can also be rendered accessible to a modern-day, and less theologically informed, audience. As an anchorite, Julian is likely to have been familiar with the widely disseminated thirteenth-century anchoritic guide, Ancrene Wisse, which had been adapted for use by the laity of both sexes since its first appearance. Even if she was not, Julian’s writing can still be read most fruitfully alongside this text which, purporting to offer spiritual guidance for enclosed religious women, is also imbued with the type of deeply entrenched antipathy towards the female body that characterises much of the literature of the period. It is just such an antipathy that contemporary feminist Luce Irigaray identifies in the epigraph to this essay as ‘paternal language . . . which . . . bar[s] the corporeal’. By ‘corporeal’, Irigaray means the female body and those positive yet subliminated discourses associated with it. Julian’s own refusal to ‘bar the corporeal’ as evidenced in her texts therefore allows for a most useful approach to her writing for the contemporary reader. Indeed, it can be argued that Julian resolutely employs intensely pro-female imagery as a type of antidote to the relentless misogyny (the ‘barring’) contained within much medieval literature and Ancrene Wisse, in particular.24 Moreover, she simultaneously and methodically transforms disparaged female corporeality into a fully realised expression of the mystical and the divine. The potential of the embodied female – and the discourses of salvation with which Julian closely connects her – may well also have been suggested by a knowledge of gynaecological and obstetric texts (which also, incidentally, provide particularly fascinating and entertaining contextual reading for those new to Julian).25 This is particularly pertinent to Julian’s narratives concerning the Passion of Christ and of her re-presentation of God as mother figure – further pointing towards the productiveness of an approach that concentrates on the myriad bodies within her texts. Julian’s visionary experiences themselves seem to have been precipitated by the bout of severe bodily illness for which she had prayed while still a young girl, characterised by pain, paralysis and inertia. It is during the period of crisis, while she apparently lies dying, that Julian is subject to a vision of Christ’s express the same theme of debt and credit in his discussion of the atonement. On this, see Bradley, ‘Everyone’s Mystic’, p. 148. 24 For a detailed analysis of this aspect of Julian’s writing see Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and The Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Cambridge, 2004). 25 This is something that has been argued by Alexandra Barratt, ‘ “In the Lowest Part of Our Need”: Julian and Medieval Gynecological Writing’, in Sandra McEntire (ed.). Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays (New York & London, 1998), pp. 239–56.

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Passion emanating from a crucifix brought to her by a priest to comfort her. A series of sixteen separate ‘shewings’ ensue although, from the start of her writing, Julian is always at pains to emphasise that all sixteen visions cohere into one ‘hole revelation’,26 which will eventually bring her to an understanding of God’s unique love for humanity and his immanence within it. The first twelve showings focus primarily on the Incarnation and the Passion of Christ and their import for the salvation of humankind. In the Short Text, however, much emphasis is placed on the apparent paradox in which human suffering and sin are seemingly allowed to flourish by an all-loving God. This is obviously a question that has been troubling Julian for some time, since she tells us: ‘thus in my folye before this tyme, ofte I wondrede why, be the grete forseande wysdome of god, syn was nought lettede’.27 Moreover, it is a paradox that Julian finds too perplexingly difficult to resolve in this first version of her experiences, in spite of Christ’s reassurance to her that ‘Synne is behouelye’.28 Following a secondary vision in 1388, however, some fifteen years after the first, and occurring when the Short Text was probably almost complete, Julian was to receive another major insight into God’s love for humanity, leading her to conclude ‘luffe . . . is moste nere to vs alle’, and ‘he [God] is alle love’.29 For Julian now, the newly illuminated meaning of God is essentially his love for his creation, and the meaning of that love is essentially God; the one is, in fact, immanent within and indistinguishable from the other. Such an insight, therefore, radically altered Julian’s perspective on her experiences and her treatment of the paradox of sin, necessitating a complete rethink of her exegesis and initiating a revised, extended version to render more precise her experiences and their meaning. Julian’s Long Text account of the first of the sixteen showings introduces alongside her own inert body the bodies of those other primary protagonists of the mystical drama that is unfolding, namely Christ in his Passion and his mother, Mary, in a variety of her guises. This, Julian tells us, is crucial to all that will follow: all of the other visions are ‘grounded and onyd’30 in this one, and all present themselves to her in three ways: ‘by bodily syte, and by word formyd in . . . vnderstondyng, and be gostly sight’.31 As Nicholas Watson has demonstrated, this concept of visionary trinitarianism and tripartism, as originating in the writing of Saint Augustine,32 is fundamental to Julian’s writing and informs not only her means of mystical perception but also her theological stances and her literary undertaking. Her entire exegesis, for example, is dependent upon similar tripartite divisions and three-in-onenesses, which provide literary and hermeneutic tools of some flexibility and f luidity, entirely suited to her enterprise: 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

LT, p. 74. ST, pp. 59–60. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 77. LT, p. 1. Ibid., p. 117. This tripartite conception is something examined in detail by Nicholas Watson in ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, in McEntire, Essays, pp. 61–90.

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I sawe and understode that every shewing is full of privities, and therfore me behovith now to tellen iii propertes in which I am sumdele esyd. The frest is the begynnyng of techyng that I understod therin in the same tyme; the ii is the inward lernyng that I haue vnderstodyn therein sithen; the iii al the hole revelation from the begynnyng to the end, that is to sey, of this boke, which our lord God of his goodnes bryngeth oftenymes frely to the syte of myn vnderstondyng. And these iii arn so onyd, as to my vnderstondyng, that I cannot, ner may, depart them.33

Just as the Trinity consists of three separate entities who nevertheless overlap and become synonymous with each other, united ultimately within a single God, so Julian’s visionary experiences, her understanding of them and the book in which she records them inhere and merge to become one and the same. Thus, perhaps Julian’s greatest gift is her ability to perceive unity at the heart of apparent paradox and to reconcile seemingly opposing elements in her universal vision and her textual exposition of it. To this end, therefore, a modern-day consideration of the tripartism of Julian’s writing, both at the level of syntax and mystical expression provides another illuminating approach to her writing. Julian’s visions of the Passion are graphically depicted in minute, painstaking detail from a number of shifting perspectives. Continually, her foregrounding of the material body merges with the regular injection of intellectual appraisal and exegesis, again forming paradox and resolution by embracing the tripartite structure previously examined: In this sodenly I saw the rede blode trekelyn downe fro under the garlande, hote and freisly, and ryth plenteously, as it were in the time of his passion that the garlande of thornys was pressid on his blessid hede, ryte so both God and man, the same that sufferd thus for me. I conceived treuly and mightily that it was himselfe shewed it me without ony mene.34

Similarly tripartite in content and form are many of the dialogues between Julian and the suffering Christ which, although frequently relayed by means of what appears to be direct speech, are simultaneously bodily, intellectual and spiritual: [F]or he seith: ‘I love the and thou lovist me, and our love shal never be departid on to.’ I beheld the werkyng of all the blessid Trinite, in which beholdyng I saw and vnderstode these iii properties: the properte of the faderhede, the properte of the motherhede, and the properte of the lordhede in one God . . . For al our life is in thre. In the first we have our beyng and in the seconde we have oure encresyng and in the thrid we hav our fulfilling. The first is kinde; the second is mercy; the thred is grace.35

33 LT, p. 74. 34 Ibid., p. 5. 35 Ibid., p. 94.

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In rendering it this way, the inference is that such dialogue lies both within and without human experience – it is simultaneously ‘same’ and ‘other’, of God and of humankind, heard in body, in mind and in soul. The most persistent device of which Julian makes use in order to bring about an expression of unity within paradox is her adoption of a maternal matrix as her central textual hermeneutic. This is something also inherent in the extract just discussed and perfectly in keeping with Julian’s insistence on divine embodiment, the three-in-onenesses of God and the materiality of the mystical experience. Indeed, much of her Short Text is characterised by an experimentation with this maternal hermeneutic, something that will come to full fruition later in her Long Text revision where her fully developed theology of the motherhood of God will become the most fully expounded example of the use of this trope in medieval religious writing.36 The theme of motherhood is introduced by Julian early in the Short Text by means of the appearance of a series of maternal bodies, in particular the tantalisingly hazy image of her own mother who is nursing her at the height of her illness. Far from serving the purpose of mere autobiography, however, the inclusion of Julian’s own mother here immediately takes on a more complex significance. Privy to her own daughter’s suffering but helpless to prevent it, Julian’s mother has projected upon her all the anxiety and grief of the Virgin who is present in a visionary capacity and similarly lamenting the suffering of her own child, Christ, on the cross in front of Julian’s eyes. Thus, at the same time as her mother’s body conflates with that of the Virgin, the suffering body of Julian herself becomes one with the body of Christ in this ultimate act of dual imitatio. Furthermore, the potential despair of her own mother is textually reappropriated as interpretive tool to bring about an understanding not only of Mary’s loss of Christ but also the Christian’s potential loss of God: Hereyn I sawe in partye the compassyon of oure ladye saynte Marye, for criste & scho ware so anede in loove that þe gretnesse of hir loove was the cause of the mykillehede of hir payne. For so mykille as scho lovyd hym mare than alle othere, her payne passed alle othere, and so alle his disciples & alle his trewe lovers suffyrde paynes mare than thare awne bodelye dying . . . Here I sawe [a] grete anynge betwyx criste and vs.37

In this way, the relationship between the Virgin and her son – who is simultaneously God-made-man – echoes Julian’s own with her mother and Julian’s own with God. Like Christ, Julian, was once ‘anede’ to her mother within the womb, just as she is now ‘anede’ to her in empathy and love. The resultant correlation between herself and Christ is therefore skilfully manipulated in order to render her mystical understanding of God’s love for humankind in terms of the paradoxical interchangeability yet separateness of the mother and (unborn) child.

36 For an account of the development of this tradition, see Caroline Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in

the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1982). For its late-medieval use, particularly by women, see Jennifer P. Heimmel, ‘God Is Our Mother’: Julian of Norwich and the Medieval Image of Christian Feminine Divinity (Salzburg, 1982). 37 LT, p. 55.

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Moreover, this unity-within-separation, like the mystical experience itself, is, according to feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva, extra-linguistic in that it exists prior to the child’s separation and emergence into language. As a result, it occupies a site outside the proscriptions that are embedded within male-constructed language (the ‘paternal law’), which tends to focus on the mother’s body, rather than the silent process being effected within it.38 In many ways, although writing over six hundred years apart, both Julian and Kristeva recognise in motherhood a potential source for an illuminating disruption of patriarchal assumptions, suppositions and orthodox positions within socio-religious discourse. Indeed, in Julian’s work it is exactly this type of maternal discourse that serves to resolve the apparent antithesis between ‘sameness’ and ‘otherness’ inherent in her writing, in keeping with the unity at the heart of the mystical experience. The Short Text, therefore, paves the way for a much more protracted representation in the Long Text of a maternal Christ labouring on the cross to give birth to salvation, and his explicit renaming as mother to humankind. In the latter text, too, we find maternity increasingly embedded into the layers of exegesis, rather than made use of explicitly on the level of narrative. To this end, Julian’s depiction of Christ’s suffering is dependent upon two major patterns of imagery, both closely connected with the process of childbirth and thus strongly identified with the maternal feminine.39 The first of these is the use of blood and the associated imagery of fluids, and the second is that of enclosure and its womb-like connotations. Again, however, there is consolidation and development of these image patterns between the early and the later text. Julian’s vision of the crucified Christ as recounted in the Short Text, for example, is dominated by such physical details as the shedding of blood and the resultant aridity of body. Moreover, this blood-flow rapidly moves between vision and envisioner, threatening to soak the bed on which Julian is lying while experiencing this vision: ‘this ranne so plentueouslye . . . that me thought
yf itt hadde bene so in kynde for þat tyme, it schulde hafe made the bedde alle on blode & hafe passede on abowte’.40 In using this type of imagery and terminology, Julian conflates the ‘sameness’ and ‘otherness’ of Christ’s blood and likens it to her own female blood with its potential to soak the bed in which she lies. In the Long Text, however, Julian proceeds to build upon this exegetical experiment.41 Now the blood-flow becomes more evocative of the type of blood-loss often associated with menstruation and childbirth: for example, it is now explicitly ‘browne rede’, ‘bryght rede’ and ‘full thyck’.42 Such an association is further corroborated by the fact that the bleeding of Julian’s Christ, like 38 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: a Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York, 1980),

esp. p. 238. 39 For a useful overview of contemporary attitudes to women and their bodies, see Ian McLean, The

Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1980). 40 ST, p. 50. 41 Useful for an appraisal of Julian’s early use of the maternal is Sarah McNamer, ‘The Exploratory Image: God as Mother in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love’, Mystics Quarterly 15, 1 (1989), pp. 21–8. For a more detailed appraisal of the extent of Julian’s use of the motherhood hermeneutic, see McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body, pp. 64–95. 42 LT, p. 10.

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that of the woman, is described as apparently a woundless blood-flow: (‘there was neither sene skynne ne wounde, but as it were al blode’),43 creating an association between Christ’s salvific suffering and that of the bleeding female body, which further serves to inscribe the female upon Christ and Christ upon the female. The prevalence of womb-imagery in Julian’s writing develops in harmony with this type of feminisation of Christ and the Passion and is a pattern of imagery, of course, that is particularly suited to, as well as reflective of, the anchoritic setting to which Julian seems to have withdrawn during her production of the Long Text. Like the image of Christ as maternal figure that it serves to reinforce, the womb metaphor had been used by previous writers – in writings emerging from the nunnery at Helfta connected with the Sacred Heart, for example44 – but Julian’s use again transforms it from topos to fundamental unitary hermeneutic. Following the same procedure as her use of the motherhood matrix, for example, both the Short and the Long texts are punctuated with references to enclosure, the words ‘closyd’ and ‘beclosyd’ resembling a mantra in the frequency of their use: [T]he Trinite is our moder, in whom we arn al beclosid; the hey goodnes of the Trinite is our lord and in him we arn beclosid and he in us. We arn beclosid in the Fadir, and we arn beclosid in the Son, and we arn beclosid in the Holy Gost; and the Fader is beclosid in us, and the Son is beclosid in us, and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us. 45

Here, the notion of concentric circles of womb-like enclosure echoes the enclosed physical spaces of both sickroom and anchorhold, creating a unity between the external and the internal that is, again, wholly characteristic of Julian’s writing. Enclosure as a concept and a physical reality, therefore, is developed to express a perception of the immanence of God within all things and humanity’s immanence within God. In this way, Julian cataphatically46 links God and humanity by means of a synonymy with the image of the child within the mother’s womb. Perhaps the most memorable symbol that serves to fuse these layers of imagery connected with unity and enclosure is that of the womb-like hazelnut that appears in both the Short and the Long Texts. Here, God’s enclosure of humanity within his love is depicted in terms of ‘a littil thing, the quantitye of 43 Ibid., p. 19. 44 Rosalynn Voaden examines this in the context of the Helfta nuns in ‘All Girls Together: Community,

Gender and Vision at Helfta’, in Diane Watt (ed.), Medieval Women in their Communities (Cardiff, 1997), pp. 131–43. 45 LT, p. 87. 46 Within Christian mysticism, the two primary ways of approaching God are the ‘apophatic’ and the ‘cataphatic’. The former, deriving from Eastern mysticism via the teachings of Pseudo-Dionysius, is characterised by the unknowability of God. In other words, God lies beyond all human comprehension and modes of expression and can only be perceived by an understanding of what he is not. The cataphatic, on the other hand, asserts that God is knowable via aspects of human knowledge and wisdom. Here I am arguing that Julian’s use of a maternal matrix in her writing produces a cataphatic means of moving towards an understanding of what God is. Useful on this is John P. H. Clark, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, in An Introduction to the Medieval Mystics of Europe, ed. Paul Szarmach (Albany, 1984), pp. 273–91.

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an hesil nutt in thee palme of my hand’.47 Although small and apparently insignificant, this nut is nevertheless the container of ‘all that is made’ and, as such, it encompasses perfectly all the patterns of female-associated imagery already identified. Like the womb – and the anchorhold – it is intact and fruitful. It houses within its protective walls the promise of future generations infinitely larger and more productive than itself. Such, of course, was the womb of Mary, which housed the world’s salvation within its walls, and such, therefore, are the wombs of all women who will bring forth future generations in the service of God. Such too is the world, envisaged as the potential enclosed in the hand of the deity, and such is humanity enclosed within his love. Both images, therefore – that of nut and womb – unite to encapsulate the feminised notion of enclosure that is so central to Julian’s mystical theology and its exegesis, and which ultimately ties into the overarching concept of a maternal God. In the Long Text, therefore, this leads towards the protracted and unequivocal assertion of God’s maternity with which it culminates: ‘our savior is our very moder in whom we be endlesly borne and neve[r] shall come out of him’.48 God’s ‘pregnancy’, therefore, in which he holds humankind within him, is envisaged as a perpetual one, like the anchorite in the anchorhold and the seed germ dormant within the hazelnut shell. There is no longer any need to fear loss, since ‘child’ and ‘mother’ are perpetually united or ‘oned’ within the protective ‘walls’ of divine love. This concept is perhaps nowhere as dramatically demonstrated for Julian’s audience as in her account of a vision that is relayed to her in the form of a parable. Moreoever, in the Long Text, she admits to having deliberately suppressed this parable in her earlier version because of an initial inability to perceive its meaning. Indeed, it was not until a secondary vision in 1388, which appears to have illuminated its import, that she felt able to address it in her writing. This parable, concerning a lord and his servant, comprises an unusually discrete section of narrative and, as such, although deceptively complex, nevertheless provides an accessible extract for readers new to Julian’s writing. It appears to have been offered as a response to Julian’s confusion at the thirteenth showing in which sin re-emerges as the one major problematic that lies between humankind and God. Julian has already admitted to being perplexed by the question of why ‘synne was not lettid’.49 Moreover, she gets no easy response from God on this issue, except for the rather vague and ambiguous, ‘Synne is behovabil’. Julian’s response is further confused by the apparent contradiction within the assurance from God that rapidly follows on from this (using the words for which Julian’s writing is probably most renowned): ‘but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele’. Julian’s problem here, of course, is that she is wholly unable to perceive how all manner of things will be well in the face of the inevitable transgression and sinfulness of humankind and the apparent necessity for its punishment, as taught by Augustine and

47 LT, p 7. 48 Ibid., p. 93. 49 Ibid., p. 38.

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other commentators. It is for this reason that she has wholly evaded the problem in the Short Text and, in so doing, compromised its integrity. Such prevarication, is, however, eliminated from her Long Text account by means of her detailed confrontation with the formerly impenetrable parable in which an eager and loyal servant is separated from his lord by falling into a mire from which he appears to be unable to extricate himself. In her detailed exegesis of this parable, which is patently a retelling of the Fall, Julian can see no blame attached to the servant for his particular fall, just as she cannot see a child blamed by its mother for falling. Instead, she identifies that it is the servant’s inherent good will to carry out his lord’s command that has precipitated his predicament – like Adam, his flesh is frail and weak and provides the main impediment to fulfilment of his lord’s request. Equally, despite the lord’s patriarchal demeanour and apparent inertia, he feels great pleasure in the fact that his servant’s fall will facilitate his rise again and restore him to his loving company. However, this still leaves Julian musing on the paradox of how a natural predisposition towards sinfulness, represented by the servant’s fall, can be devoid of blame – a standpoint that she also recognises as running dangerously counter to the teachings of the Church. 50 The resolution of the paradox comes only when Julian makes an exegetical leap and recognises in the lowly servant the humanity of Christ – the second Adam – and in the lord a maternalistic God. In his embodiment of the whole of humanity whose female flesh he has taken on via Mary, the Christ-servant is therefore man, woman and God, uniting all in one body. As figure of multiple significance, then, the servant’s separation from his lord is only temporary and he will eventually be reunited with him, like the miscreant child to the mother, in love. The parable, therefore, demonstrates to Julian that the apparent gulf between sinful humanity and God is entirely illusory and therefore reparable; ultimately it is bridged by the redeeming sacrifice of Christ and the unconditional nature of the maternalistic love of the Divinity. By the time we reach the culmination of Julian’s Long Text, then, which follows directly on from exegesis of the parable, the momentum of Julian’s perception of God as Mother becomes unstoppable. Now, the endless labours and services carried out by the ‘ideal’ mother for her children are equally those of the lord for his servant and God for humanity: The kynde, lovand moder that wote and knowith the nede of hir childe, she kepith it ful tenderly, as the kind and condition of moderhede will. And as it wexith in age she chongyth hir werking but not hir love. And whan it is waxen of more age, she suffrid that it be bristinid in brekyng downe of vices to makyn the child to receivyn vertues and graces.51

For Julian, a mother’s love is equally liberated and liberating and, although utterly consistent, is not a fixed, unchangeable phenomenon but can move and alter as circumstances dictate. This apparent paradox, however, is again recon50 On the heterodoxy and orthodoxy of the parable, see M. L. del Maestro, ‘Juliana of Norwich: Parable

of the Lord and Servant – Radical Orthodoxy’, Mystics Quarterly 14 (1988), pp. 84–93. 51 LT, p. 98.

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ciled, this time by Julian’s use of the term ‘werkyng’ in connection with motherhood. While offering the child the appearance of free will, nevertheless the working love of the mother shifts and changes where circumstances dictate in order to guide the child to mature adulthood. Similarly, the working motherhood of God works assiduously on the behalf of humanity, adapting itself to humanity’s own child-like circumstances and patiently guiding it towards an expression of mature love of God. Instead of meting out punishment, therefore, Julian’s God’s response is one of patient understanding, guidance and nurture, again envisaged in terms of the reciprocity between mother and child. Such a reciprocity becomes the essence of what Julian regards as an unconditional love between child and its mother, humanity and its maker, and it is this that brings about the unification of all the apparent contraries, paradoxes and inconsistencies that otherwise would resist resolution. Just as God is simultaneously outside and inside, encloser and enclosed, lover and beloved, so he is patriarch and matriarch, male and female. As a result, Julian can express with clarity and resolution, ‘As verily as God is our fader, as verily God is our moder,’52 refusing to allow one concept to overshadow the other and thus bringing about within her text the unity that also lies at the heart of her mystical vision. Both male and female become a means to unification with God, and all notions of difference dissolve within that union. In effect, she has already found the language of ‘the bodily encounter’ that Irigaray has called upon in more recent times for ‘us’ to find within human discourse; Julian has already developed a corporeal syntax that can ‘go along with’ established patriarchal utterance and superimpose itself upon it without eradicating it. Thus, she fundamentally counters the dominance of traditional male-focused and patriarchal thought and expression, demonstrating an awareness of the human experience as valid in all its forms and the male perspective as being not necessarily the only pertinent one. For Julian, both male and female are entirely integral to the deity who is simultaneously male, female, father, mother, son, spouse, same, other. And this, finally, is perhaps what constitutes Julian’s greatest strength as writer and visionary – her ability to include everybody and everything into her theology, to make accessible on a whole range of levels her multiple insights into the human condition, into love and its relation to the transcendent. However we choose to read – or to teach – her texts, there is no doubt that her vision of perpetual and universal well-being, articulated in simultaneously complex, yet accessible literary form, continues to offer satisfaction to the increasing number of readers who discover her writing in all its variations almost six hundred years after its final conception within the dark, enclosed space of her Norwich anchorhold.

52 Ibid., p. 96.

TEACHING AND THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE

9 ‘I Use but Comownycacyon and Good Wordys’: Teaching and The Book of Margery Kempe BARRY WINDEATT

Q

UESTIONS about teaching as an aim and activity in The Book of Margery iKempe – whether Margery Kempe’s role constitutes teaching, or whether her book sets out to teach through some didactic design on its readership – can offer fruitful approaches to understanding the Book in the present. What is Margery Kempe’s book for? How to cope with aspects of Margery Kempe’s conduct that seem to appropriate a teaching role is something that challenges her contemporary society. It raises issues about her claims, for with what authority is she dispensing instruction (if she is), and precisely what is she teaching? The prospect of a woman engaged in teaching was especially disturbing in the context of contemporary concerns, concurrent with Kempe’s active career, about the Lollards and their vernacular theology.1 The archbishop of York wants Kempe to swear that she will not teach nor call to account the people in his diocese, but she declines so to swear, reserving the right ‘to speak of God’ (which includes the right habitually to reprove people for their blasphemous swearing, or misspeaking of God). Indeed, she is so bold as to claim that ‘the Gospel yevyth me leve to spekyn of God’, which predictably provokes a great cleric to cite St Paul against her that no woman should preach. Kempe’s response is to distinguish between preaching in a pulpit (which, of course, she does not do) and that kind of general moral exhortation to one’s fellows, which is for her inseparable from Christian daily life: ‘I preche not, ser, I come in no pulpytt. I use but comownycacyon [i.e. conversation] and good wordys, and that wil I do whil I leve’ (chapter 52; p. 253).2 When she is then also accused of telling anticlerical tales, Kempe’s reaction is to tell her tale of the bear and the pear tree, which does indeed 1

2

The prohibition was of course a larger and more general one. In his De examinatione doctrinarum, Jean Gerson wrote: ‘The female sex is forbidden on apostolic authority to teach in public, that is either by word or by writing . . . All women’s teaching, particularly formal teaching by word and by writing, is to be held suspect unless it has been diligently examined, and much more fully than men’s. The reason is clear: common law – and not any kind of common law, but that which comes from on high – forbids them. And why? Because they are easily seduced and determined seducers; and because it is not proved that they are witnesses to divine grace’; cited in A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, 2 vols (Toronto, 1978), i.51. All reference is by chapter and page number to Barry Windeatt, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004).

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confront clerical abuses, and might serve as a preacher’s exemplary story in a sermon. Yet, to their credit (and Kempe’s), her clerical audience are variously pleased and moved by this tale, and her accuser declares himself smitten with remorse. Others might have been satisfied with this minor triumph in front of the second most important churchman in the kingdom, but Margery Kempe is not one to pass up an opportunity out of mere tact: she recalls how at home in Lynn an upright preacher is wont to say from his pulpit: ‘ “Yyf any man be evyl plesyd wyth my prechyng, note hym wel, for he is gylty”. And ryth so, ser,’ seyd sche to the clerk, ‘far ye be me, God foryeve it yow’ (chapter 52; p. 256). So, having carefully denied being a preacher, with this parting barb Kempe implicitly aligns herself with the upright preacher in his pulpit, whose homiletic effectiveness is proved by the very displeasure and criticism of the guilty whom he makes squirm. This episode can serve as an emblem of a larger pattern of tensions and ambiguities in Kempe’s position. Although orthodox and conformist in many of her devout observances, she is precluded as a married woman from those conventional roles as chaste nun, anchoress or widowed vowess, that might have contained and channelled her energies. Instead, she happens to have the financial means and the sheer drive to strike out on an unmapped path where there are no models to guide either Kempe or her society’s judgement of her conduct. Her very convictions make her conspicuously and unconventionally vocal in ways that risk confusion with Lollard intransigence. An early chapter records her being rebuked ‘for reprevyng of synne, for spekyng of vertu, for comownyng in scriptur whech sche lernyd in sermownys and be comownyng wyth clerkys’ (chapter 14; pp. 97–8). Even in the manner of listing them, Kempe evades the charges. Was she not to speak of God, not least from charitable concern for her fellow Christians? Yet the line between this and what constituted teaching was open to interpretation. One of the unifying strands in the narrative is that it gives Kempe’s side of recurrent situations in which her society seems not to know what to make of her. The only aspect of her insights that her community tolerates self-interestedly is the socially useful one of prophecy, since here her truth claims can be tested by results.3 Perhaps early brushes with authority taught her caution over any claim to a teaching role: she seems to confine herself in company to moral exhortation and the retailing of morally improving stories. Thus, she is careful to say that her friend and supporter Thomas Marchale was ‘drawyn be the good wordys that God put in hir to sey of contricyon and compunccyon’ (chapter 45; p. 223), and she records how it was said of her that ‘this woman hath sowyn meche good seed in Rome . . . that is to sey, schewyd good exampyl to the pepyl’ (chapter 41; p. 210). Years later in London she does not represent herself as doing more than reproaching people for their swearing, simply reporting ‘hir spekyng profityd rith mech in many personys’ (2, chapter 9; p. 418). Yet this possibly derives from a retrospective caution when the Book was written down, and it may be that in practice Margery Kempe took upon herself a more instructional role, 3

See Diane Watt, Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1997), ch. 2.

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however obliquely and implicitly. She lets slip something of this when, during her return journey from Rome and while awaiting a Channel crossing home to England, she tells how she went out into the fields with some Englishmen ‘the whech sche informyd in the lawys of God as wel as sche cowde’ (chapter 42; p. 213). Does The Book of Margery Kempe then have some didactic aim on its reader, just as Margery Kempe exhorted people to live better through her conversation with them? Is it aiming to teach something? It does not set out a ‘method’ of contemplation to follow, or map out strategies like The Cloud of Unknowing for advancing in contemplative practice, or it does not appear to do so. It offers itself as the personal testimony of a witness to contemplation, although scarcely a very easily imitable one. It records, as valuable for others, some of the extraordinary experiences of one idiosyncratic individual – not that others can become like her, for implicitly it is claiming that she is specially, even uniquely, favoured. For its own purposes, The Book of Margery Kempe is so selective that it constitutes a ‘life’ and conforms to later ideas of ‘autobiography’ only partially. Nonetheless, to challenge the natural tendency to claim for it the status of the earliest autobiography in English can be fruitful in interpreting the Book. Its own specialness can be brought into focus by exploring the ways in which the Book ignores some of what has become central to later autobiography in form or subject matter. The Book is strikingly uninterested in what later readers might see as being the whole person: only certain kinds of experience in adult life are recorded, but with some (half-hearted and unmethodical) attempt at preserving the subject’s anonymity. Kempe explicitly says that things are not written down in chronological order, which she candidly admits that she has forgotten, but she does not elaborate on what does order the materials. Events have significance not in themselves, but when read as signs and tokens of larger import. Chronology is vague, except where the sequence of events proves a spiritual point: so Kempe will record only ‘Whan tyme cam that this creatur schuld vysiten tho holy placys wher owyr Lord was whyk [alive] and ded, as sche had be revelacyon yerys aforn’ (chapter 26; pp. 149–50). There is limited sense of pattern to the life in question, or rather, there is one reiterative pattern. There is almost no sense of an overview within which progress is plotted, or rather, the spiritual overview is taken as read and remains unstated. There is little sense of perspective and proportion, of background and foreground, in which some things are details within a larger picture. Rather, the text reads as if everything is foreground, with little sense of differentiation between incidents, which follow one after the other, as if of equal significance. Kempe’s mystical marriage to the Godhead (chapter 35) receives little more space and emphasis in the narrative than her circumstantial account shortly before of how she lost – and found under the bed in a foreign inn – the ring that she already regarded as her wedding ring to Jesus (chapter 31). It is not Kempe’s method to locate events by reference to the calendar time of years and months, although occurrences are sometimes linked to the liturgical year or to points in her own life (‘whan owyr Lord had foryovyn hir hir synne, as is wrete beforn’, chapter 15; p. 101). In such differences from modern expectations, the Book can bring into

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focus earlier ideas about the values and centre of the self, especially the female self. But this must entail letting the Book’s seeming disjointedness or its omissions establish a valid, if different, reading of experience on its own terms and in its own shape. For why should a life necessarily be conformed to conventional (male, clerical) constructions of outward historical time and chronological order, or comply with latter-day judgements about what constitutes a ‘balanced’ coverage of events and material? It can be helpful to contextualise The Book of Margery Kempe by means of generic comparisons and contrasts, especially with the lives and revelations of female saints and visionaries, and particularly those that are mentioned in the Book, such as St Bridget of Sweden, together with Mary of Oignies and Elizabeth of Hungary (chapters 62, 68; pp. 292, 296, 311).4 There are also comparisons and contrasts to be made with the narratives of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, especially in accounts of some pilgrims’ intense affective identification with the Holy Places.5 The contrasts derive from the Book’s inward focus that largely excludes the specificity and information that such pilgrimage texts purposefully include as part of their utility. In the case of the saints’ lives and revelations, it is the potent model of St Bridget’s experience and example that offers a more illuminating parallel for The Book of Margery Kempe than comparisons with the form of Bridget’s book. Kempe’s Book, as a text, does not seem very similar to the books by or about Bridget, Elizabeth of Hungary or Mary of Oignies as texts. There are striking incidents and experiences in parallel, but it is the idea of St Bridget or Mary of Oignies – the larger pattern, shape and impetus of their lives – that is more influential for Margery Kempe, who could only hear tell of their experiences. If the Book had been made more like these various saints’ legends and books of revelations, then it would be frankly duller than it is, smoothed out in organisation, subordinated to a moralising, didactic purpose, and without its vividness of idiosyncratic experience and expression. If the references by name to these continental holy women and to particular texts had somehow been omitted from the Book, modern interpreters would probably pay more attention to the potent example that Margery Kempe and her advisers might have found in the role of St Mary Magdalene – a fallen woman yet an intimate of Jesus, evangelist, weeper without compare – a model all the more potent for its omnipresence in pervasive imagery than for its place in any specific text. Is it helpful instead to think of The Book of Margery Kempe as a kind of ‘autohagiography’ – a saint’s life such as the would-be saint might compose about herself?6 Such a text might draw on the hagiographical narratives of female saints, documenting an impressive sequence of vindicating proofs and miracles that endorse the subject’s special sanctity, and so pre-empting what 4 5 6

See Roger Ellis, ‘Margery Kempe’s Scribe and the Miraculous Books’, in Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition, ed. Helen Phillips (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 161–75. See Windeatt (2000), pp. 25, 162, 169–74, 180–1, 184, 189 and nn. On autohagiography, see Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984), and Kate Greenspan, ‘Autohagiography and Medieval Women’s Spiritual Autobiography’, in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville, 1996), pp. 216–36.

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might be assembled posthumously in hopes of canonisation. Dictated by the aspiring saint in her lifetime, the autohagiography cannot include either the saint’s heroic final martyrdom, or her holy death in an odour of sanctity, or her cult and the miracles that follow her death. Nonetheless, Margery’s book does project a powerful image of martyrdom, albeit not literally. This is martyrdom by character assassination, by slander and detraction (although Kempe’s mindset simply rewrites all such worldly criticism and abuse into validation of her otherworldly vocation). It is martyrdom by cutting words, in which a contemporary urban community becomes a nightmare of persecuting censure and exclusion for someone who transgresses socially established norms and expectations. Mapping the martyred Kempe’s movements and her places of resort, sanctuary and devotion within Lynn as a place and a community (for example, the Jesyne Chapel in St Margaret’s Church) can enable further exploration of how her life relates to the special spaces and territories of the late-medieval town and church, with their various privileges and significance.7 Whether autohagiography or not, any such self-account will be some form of self-construction, and it can be revealing to approach The Book of Margery Kempe in the light of how its subject is constructed by the text’s mode of presentation: Lynn Staley’s distinction between the figure in the text that she calls ‘Margery’ and the figure behind the text that might be labelled ‘Kempe’ can serve to remind the modern reader that the selection of material and its emphasis may well represent a particular self-interpretation.8 Exploring the Book as a species of self-account raises the issue of what kind of collaborative authorship is suggested by the two prefaces, and hence what degree of authorship a self-professedly illiterate woman might exercise. The Book inscribes within itself a history of Kempe’s trials and tribulations in getting her book written down. The accomplishment of this textualisation is presented as something partaking of the miraculous, and in this it may seek to align itself with the writing of St Bridget’s and other texts by or about women. It would be unreasonable to preclude some considerable input by her amanuensis into Kempe’s book and, as we have the text, it is hard to determine how much scribal editing has preceded its present form. Some modern readers will prefer to think that the priest scribe may have played so important a role in a composition written down by dictation that he must be credited with being at least in part the author of what is now called ‘The Book of Margery Kempe’. Nonetheless, the Book still carefully records the element of supervision Kempe contrived to exercise by 7 8

On Kempe’s Lynn, see especially Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and her World (Harlow, 2002). See Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (Philadelphia, 1994). In ‘The Book of Margery Kempe; Or, The Diary of a Nobody’, The Southern Review 38 (2002), pp. 625–35, A. C. Spearing warns that recent critics ‘have perhaps been too inclined to take [Kempe] at her own valuation’, and suggests how, without preconceptions, a reader might well take the Book not only as a fiction but as a parody, such as the parodic life-narrative of Mr Pooter in George and Weedon Grossmith’s The Diary of Nobody: ‘It is tempting to read [the Book] . . . as the expression of a hidden consciousness well aware that what “this creature” regards as the vita of an English St Bridget is actually the Diary of a Nobody . . . “This creature” ought to be a fictional character, but she was not: She was a Somebody, and to read her Book is to experience pain as well as pleasure’ (pp. 633–5). See also the chapter on Margery Kempe by A. C. Spearing in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 83–97, especially pp. 92–4.

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hearing the material read back to her, word for word, after it had been written (‘And so he red it ovyr beforn this creatur every word, sche sumtym helpyng where ony difficulte was,’ p. 49).9 The writing process implied by Kempe’s account appears to have evolved out of some kind of collaborative conferral between her and her priest amanuensis. In this regard, Kempe’s experience may be compared with what is known of how St Bridget dictated her texts,10 or how the works associated with Angela of Foligno11 or Dorothea of Montau12 came to be written down by men. Margery Kempe and her priest amanuensis had an earlier, almost illegible version to work from, written down four years before by someone (very possibly her son) who had visited Kempe from Germany. This earlier version might not have been as full as the present text, since it was written down in a short time by a sick man, and in subsequent transcription it was possibly expanded. As the proem records, the priest read back the earlier version to Kempe as he copied it, and she helped him where the going was difficult. The Lynn priest may have transcribed the book much as a clerk in a legal proceeding would ‘translate’ a witness’s testimony into the third-person discourse of a court record, tidying the syntax, phrasing and diction of speech into something more literate and ordered.13 When Kempe heard read back to her what had been transcribed of her recollections, she would be unlikely to object if they had been made to sound

9

10

11

12

13

For a review of the problem, see Windeatt (2000), pp. 5–9. For the background, see: John Coakley, ‘Friars as Confidants of Holy Women in Medieval Dominican Hagiography’, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca, NY, 1991), pp. 222–46, and his ‘Gender and the Authority of Friars: The Significance of Holy Women for Thirteenth-Century Franciscans and Dominicans’, Church History 60 (1991), pp. 445–60; and also Janette Dillon, ‘Holy Women and their Confessors or Confessors and their Holy Women?’, in Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalyn Voaden (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 115–40. On the nature of St Bridget’s works, dictated by her in Swedish but translated by others into Latin, see Roger Ellis, ‘The Divine Message and Its Human Agents: St Birgitta and Her Editors’, in Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana, 35: 19 (Salzburg, 1993), 1, pp. 209–33. In Bridget’s Revelationes Extravagantes, Christ hints at her confessors’ tendencies to ‘improve’ on his communications to her: ‘I am like a carpenter, who cuts wood in the forest, carries it home, and then carves a beautiful image and decorates it with colours and lineaments. When his friends see that the image could be decorated with still more beautiful hues, they also add their colours by painting on it. So I, God, have cut my words from my divine forest, and placed them in your heart. Truly, my friends rendered them into books in accordance with the grace given to them and coloured and decorated them’; cited in Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 31–2. See Catherine M. Mooney, ‘The Authorial Role of Brother A. in the Composition of Angela of Foligno’s Revelations’, in Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance, ed. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley (Philadelphia, 1994), pp. 34–63. See Dyan Elliott, ‘Authorizing a Life: The Collaboration of Dorothea of Montau and John Marienwerder’, in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters , ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 168–91. Cf. also Ute Stargardt, ‘Male Clerical Authority in the Spiritual (Auto)biographies of Medieval Holy Women’, in Women as Protagonists and Poets in the German Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen (Goettingen, 1991), pp. 209–38. This comparison with the transcription of legal testimony has been made by Felicity Riddy. See David Burnley, ‘Late Medieval English Translation: Types and Reflections’, in The Medieval Translator, ed. Roger Ellis et al. (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 47–8, citing an account of procedure in an early fourteenthcentury Kent court in M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (London, 1979): ‘the language of record depended on the status of the persons concerned and the nature of the document and not on the language actually spoken on the occasion’.

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rather more like a book. Her concern is likely to have been with the substance of what she believed that God wished her to have recorded. Her attitude to the precise phrasing may have been akin to her expressed view that troubling over the correct form of foreign place names came a poor second to her pursuit of contemplation (‘Yf the namys of the placys be not ryth wretyn, late no man merveylyn, for sche stodyid mor abowte contemplacyon than the namys of the placys.’ 2, chapter 4; p. 401). However, in copying and perhaps revising an existing text, the priest amanuensis was not beginning from scratch on his own terms. Nor did he, like some amanuenses of medieval holy women, take to himself the authority and thereby exercise the control, of translating into Latin what the women dictated in their vernacular. This may partly explain the fusion in the Book’s language of the colloquial and the clerical in diction and phrasing, which does not of itself prove clerical intervention, since her Book may retain echoes of Kempe’s long years of hearing texts read to her and of conversing with clerics. (Kempe’s absorptive mind could have taken in a great deal during ‘the most part of vii yer er viii yer’ that one priest reads to her: chapter 58.) It may also explain the impression given by the Book that clerical editing, if present, has not been pushed very far or systematically. Ostensibly to be setting down Kempe’s words in English, in the same vernacular that she spoke, can give modern readers an impression of closeness to Kempe’s own voice that requires some interpreting. The Book is not akin to the transcript of a tape-recording, such as a modern practitioner of oral history might record from an elderly person with interesting memories. Transcription may have involved some ‘translation’ and mediation, but with scant signs of a more thoroughgoing clerical restructuring and reconceptualising. The text does not read as if its material has been prioritised, categorised and arranged schematically in order to promote some clerkly didactic purpose. As prose, the Book does not show signs of having been written out of a process whereby the amanuensis asked the subject questions (as was the case with the accounts of some holy women), and in that way retained a quasi-authorial initiative in shaping the text. The comment that he had not read so fully about the weeping of Mary of Oignies when the present treatise was written does suggest some subsequent layers of rewriting, at least in places.14 There is some slight grouping of material by theme, which may reflect editing (‘it is wretyn her for convenyens, in-as-mech as it is in felyng leche to the materys that ben wretyn beforn’, chapter 25; p. 146). But that some chapters seem written by the amanuensis from his viewpoint (chapters 24, 25, 62) only serves to emphasise by contrast how unclerkly is the viewpoint from which the Book is generally written. Which gives the more sustained impression of single-minded purpose: the impetus and continuity of a strong-willed, characterisable voice, or the signs of the priest scribe’s interventions? The Book is quite open in the proem about its own nature as a dictated text, 14 Cf. ‘the preste whech wrot this tretys . . . had seyn and red the mater beforn-wretyn meche mor

seryowslech [attentively] and expressiowslech [in detail] than it is wretyn in this tretys (for her is but a lityl of the effect therof, for he had not ryth cler mende of the sayd mater whan he wrot this tretys, and therfor he wrot the lesse therof)’ (ch. 62; p. 294).

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and it can be helpfully defamiliarising for modern readers to explore the qualification of single authorship that such mediation may imply (as well as the strategic distance from Kempe’s potentially risky material that a clerical amanuensis allows her).15 However, the proem does read sufficiently differently from the Book to suggest the possible limits of the priest scribe’s influence on the work as a whole. The proem has a rather clerical rhetoric and preachiness of tone (‘Than was pompe and pryde cast down,’ p. 43) that is largely distinct from the book proper, and this contrast indicates how the Book might have read if indeed it had been edited systematically by Kempe’s amanuensis. The proem imposes conventionally pious patternings on Kempe’s experiences and draws morals. And since the proem claims it was written by the amanuensis on an added leaf after he had completed the transcription of a quire of the book, and since the proem sets about moralising what is recognisably the earlier part of the text (her loss of worldly goods, the humbling of her pride, her visits to prelates), it is tempting to think that Kempe’s account of the text’s genesis is a truthful one, and that the difference in style and in moralisation of material between the proem and main text only confirms that the latter is broadly what Kempe dictated. Even though Kempe came to believe God wished her to have her experience written down, it seems significant that she begs one of her would-be amanuenses (although not, in the event, the one who completes the book) to write the book ‘and nevyr to bewreyn [reveal] it as long as sche leved’ (p. 48). Whatever the lessons that caution may have taught her at this late point in her life, Margery Kempe is not driven by an impetus to see any lessons of hers widely circulated in her lifetime through her book. When in Leicester, she is so moved inwardly at the sight of a crucifix in a church that – familiar story – she cannot prevent herself from crying out and sobbing loudly, to general astonishment. But – and it is a characteristic aspect of how she remembers and presents experience – this episode about her overflow of powerful feelings is presented within the frame of a recollected exchange in direct speech: Whan [her crying] was ovyrcomyn, sche goyng owt at the chirche dore, a man toke hir be the sleve and seyd: ‘Damsel, why wepist thu so sor?’ ‘Ser,’ sche seyd, ‘it is not yow to telle.’ And so sche . . . went forth. (chapter 46; p. 228)

Why should Kempe follow her remembered reaction to the crucifix with her account of her refusal to explain herself? The imagined future readers of her book are assumed to be able to understand her inward emotion well enough, because she has already confided in them that, prompted by beholding the crucifix, the Passion of Christ entered her mind so that she melted into tears of compassion, and the fire of love kindled so intently in her mind that she could not conceal it.16 By contrast, the exchange with the man who takes her sleeve 15 See Lynn Staley Johnson, ‘The Trope of the Scribe and the Question of Literary Authority in the

Works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe’, Speculum 66 (1991), pp. 820–38. 16 Cf. Alexandra Barratt, ‘Stabant matres dolorosae : Women as Readers and Writers of Passion Prayers,

Meditations and Visions’, and R. N. Swanson, ‘Passion and Practice: the Social and Ecclesiastical

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suggests that she is not going to attempt to explain to someone who needs to ask. Even if she cannot control the outward tokens of her inner life in weeping and crying, she seems to grow cautious in what she divulges of inward feelings, and to realise that she is recording something that she cannot and should not try to communicate on demand. By the late point at which the Book is dictated, the text is recording matters that Kempe would have been careful about revealing to more than her trusted confidants. It is a record of inward experience. This experience is carefully, even scrupulously, defined and presented in the Book, and the nature of Kempe’s testimony to her inner life deserves closer attention. Julian of Norwich had distinguished between bodily and ghostly sights, or sights ‘ghostly in bodily likeness’. The Book is also careful to specify what Kempe perceives in the bodily senses or when sleepy, while by contrast what is her most valued experience is emphasised to have been seen ‘with her ghostly eye’. She reports what she sees ‘in her soul’; she beholds in the sight of her soul, or things appear ‘to her ghostly sight’, or God may ‘speak to her ghostly understanding’. Some recollections seem to be without reservation (‘Beforn hir face, sche herd and saw in hir gostly sygth, the mornyng of owyr Lady,’ chapter 28; p. 163). Others introduce a slightly guarded note: ‘Than sche thowt sche saw owyr Lady in hir sowle’ (chapter 29; p. 169); ‘beheld how owr Lady was, hir thowt, in deying’ (chapter 73; p. 323); ‘Than on a nyth sche say in vision how owyr Lady, hir thowt . . . askyd mete for hir’ (chapter 38; p. 200). The last chapters of Book 1 show such definition in particularly concentrated and careful form. Or again, there are instances throughout the Book where ‘gostly’ inward sights appear to be implicitly verified by the measure of how vividly and concretely they resemble the corporeal substance of bodily sights: ‘sche had so very contemplacyon in the sygth of hir sowle as yf Crist had hangyn befor hir bodily eye in hys manhode’ (chapter 28; p. 166); ‘sche sey swech gostly syghtys in hir sowle as freschly and as verily as yyf it had ben don in dede in hir bodily syght’ (chapter 79; p. 345). Kempe’s emphasis on bodily vividness works to distinguish rather than confound inward and bodily sights. Often recording her seeing of bodily sights – processions, ritual reenactments – Kempe strives to distinguish the verisimilitude of her inward contemplative perceptions from the liturgical occasions celebrating aspects of Christ’s manhood that sometimes triggered her process of contemplation. Not that Margery Kempe is primarily a witness to original visions, and nor should she be dismissed on the basis of a claim that her Book does not make. Many of her visual experiences are that heightened devout empathy with the scenes of Christ’s life encouraged by contemporary devotional literature, and she reports these experiences less as miraculous in themselves than as part of her spiritual journey undertaken in dialogue with God. As a contemplative, Kempe’s characteristic medium is not so much the visual as the verbal one of prayer and dialogue. What has been mostly ignored in modern reception of the Book is how much of it is taken up with Kempe’s prayerful conversations with Implications of Passion Devotion in the Late Middle Ages’, in The Broken Body: Passion Devotion in Late-Medieval Culture, ed. A. A. MacDonald, H. N. B. Ridderbos and R. M. Schlusemann (Groningen, 1998), pp. 55–71 and 1–30.

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Christ. Just as Kempe’s visions tend to be discounted for being too much like other sources, too visually derivative, to give her any claim as a mystic and visionary, so too her reported colloquies are overlooked, perhaps because Christ’s speeches sound too little different from other voices in the Book, and might seem likely to derive from cautious clerical rewriting.17 Yet Kempe may actually be describing what St John of the Cross, in his Ascent of Mount Carmel, defines as a type of conversation with God in which ‘the praying mind is used as an instrument by the Holy Spirit and in a manner talks to itself, producing the impression of a conversation with God’, not least through the soul’s earnest desire to hear God.18 On such an interpretation of Kempe’s colloquies with Christ, the recorded words may translate and rephrase the illumination received into the soul’s own personal language. Hence, from a biographical or autobiographical point of view, it is of more interest than disappointment that Kempe’s accounts of hearing God’s voice speaking to her almost inevitably re-express her understanding of God’s voice in her terms, translating into her own idiom the privilege she feels in being drawn into an almost inexpressibly private and intimate dialogue that divinely endorses her. At specially solemn moments of injunction, prediction and assurance, God is said to speak to her soul, and various colloquies involve Kempe ‘saying in thought’ to God, with Christ described as saying or answering in or to her mind. This is part of what Kempe often denominates ‘dalliance’, and the Book carefully places and ascribes these inward speeches that are such a characterising aspect of the text. Some of her perceptions (such as the different coloured cushions for the members of the Trinity) are shrewdly positioned through Kempe’s recording of a dialogue in which Christ reminds her (thus implicitly approving) that she has had such perceptions (chapter 86; p. 373). In sequences like that in chapter 86, the Book records Christ rehearsing to her how she has pleased him, dwelling on her inward life and prayers so as to publish with divine endorsement the patterns of Kempe’s inner spiritual accomplishments. What the amanuesis has taken down in the Book is Margery Kempe’s characteristic mode of recollection through the exchange of direct speech, whether between her and her contemporaries, or between her and members of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary and various saints. Reported direct speech is the main fabric of the Book, and through recollected colloquy Kempe puts her central concern at the heart of her self-account: her relationship with God. By comparison with this, her difficulties with her disputed authority, with disbelieving clerics and disobliging mayors are – for Kempe – only an annoying distraction. 17 Cf. the case of Dorothea of Montau, where ‘God’s confessional instruction is again subtly inscribed

with the practice of contemporary confessional manuals’ (Elliott, ‘Authorizing a Life’, p. 177). 18 For the reference to The Ascent of Mount Carmel (2.28–31), see the insightful account of conversa-

tions with Christ in Santha Bhattacharji, God is an Earthquake: The Spirituality of Margery Kempe (London, 1997), ch. 8, to which my discussion is much indebted. As Bhattacharji notes (pp. 104–5), the whole phenomenon of hearing Christ speak and of conversations with him was evidently not the subject of a developed medieval tradition of commentary, advice and instruction: the article on ‘Paroles intérieures’ in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité (vol. 12, cols 252–7) begins with St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. See also Barry Windeatt, ‘Reading and Re-reading The Book of Margery Kempe’, in A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe, ed. John Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 1–16.

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In Piers Plowman – as he grows ever more involved with what for him is the greater reality of what he sees in his dreams – the dreamer Will comes to feel that his waking life in contemporary society is something flashing by in the brief interstices between the true continuum of his dreams. In the Book, the continuum of prayerful colloquy with Christ constructs and reflects an inward spiritual and contemplative life – largely indifferent to time and place, anxious, circlingly reiterative, ever seeking and receiving answers, often to similar or recurrent concerns. In terms of genre, the Book can be seen as a life – or a more open-ended ‘form of living’ as the proem tellingly terms it – presented through a book of recollected prayers. Held within a loose narrative framework that records the occasions of the prayers and their aftermath, these prayers report an extended dialogue with Christ, in an interchange that dramatises Kempe’s states of mind over the years. This recurrent tendency of Kempe’s Book to take the form of remembered colloquy between Christ and herself gives it the immediacy of a stream-of-consciousness narrative. However stylised and formalised, it represents states of mind, states of irresolution and anxiety – never in and for themselves, but as prompts and cues for the resolutions that God gives her. And her inward dialogue with God is contained within the narrative of Kempe’s interruptive and disputatious outward dialogue with her generally disbelieving society, so that there develops the strongest contrast between this imperfect, irritating outer world and the inner world where, however anxiously, assurance and endorsement may be sought. Not least because of the difficulties the Book records Kempe having with an instructional role, her text does not represent at all clearly any direct connection between what she learns inwardly and what she may have hoped her book would teach. This is why it can be illuminating to move beyond Kempe as a frustrated would-be teacher, in order to see her instead as being rather more concerned with learning than teaching. For Margery Kempe, the point and justification of her book, as of her life, is that in it God speaks to her and she speaks to God. Early in the Book, a monk at Canterbury says to her ‘Damsel, I her seyn God spekyth onto the’ (chapter 12; p. 91); and while in the Holy Land she is known to the Franciscans as ‘the woman of Inglond the which, thei had herd seyd, spak wyth God’ (chapter 29; p. 172). To the leading question of another monk at Canterbury – ‘What kanst thow seyn of God?’ – Kempe tactfully replies ‘I wyl bothe speke of hym and heryn of hym’ (chapter 13; p. 93). In the Book as a whole she is as good as her word, and shows herself listening and learning as well as speaking. After all, she is learning in and through her prayerful colloquies with Christ and his mother, as is made explicit on the various occasions when they are reported as ‘teaching’ her. The Book records how Saints Peter, Paul, Katherine and others ‘aperyd to hir sowle and tawt hir how sche schuld lovyn owyr Lord’ (chapter 17; p. 116); how the Virgin Mary undertakes ‘to teche the in al wyse how thu schalt plese God best’ (chapter 21; p. 134); how Kempe hears Christ’s voice in her soul saying ‘I schal preche the and teche the myselfe’ (chapter 41; p. 208); and how, much later, she had contemplation ‘techyng hir how sche schulde lovyn God’ (chapter 83; p. 362). Yet this exalted instruction is represented as something that Kempe cannot then communicate to others (except her confessor), as when she reports that the Virgin Mary ‘tawt this creatur and informyd hir so

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wondyrfully that sche was abaschyd to speke it or telle it to any, the maters wer so hy and so holy’ (chapter 21; p. 134). This only acknowledges openly what is generally implicit in the Book: that the stream of edifying conversation and pious exhortation that Kempe beams at those who cross her path was unlikely to include, or include very directly, those colloquies with divine beings that compose much of her book. These seem the record of a more inward contemplative communing, which perhaps she simply could not communicate, and came to see would be dangerous to make the subject of teaching. Her Book is concluded by an extended example of Kempe’s prayers (pp. 421–8), and to my opening question – what is The Book of Margery Kempe for? – this provides one answer, in that these concluding prayers are offered for the use of future readers by one who saw herself as constructed by and skilled in the art of prayer. As such, the example of Kempe’s prayers does round off her book by attempting to bequeath its readers a method for emulation and use, as well as acknowledging how the form and activity of prayer constitutes the Book as it is. In ignoring as an embarrassment the colloquies with Christ that actually constitute the greater part of the Book, much recent reception of the text tends to avoid what Kempe would have regarded as the centre of what she had to say. For all the unparalleled interest that the Book has recently attracted, one underlying aspect of modern assessment has been that Kempe actually has little of original substance to convey on her own theme of herself as a contemplative. The denial that Kempe’s book qualifies as a mystical witness – an assessment made from a theological aspect – has fuelled a more pervasive sense of her limitations. Modern academic reception of Kempe has felt more comfortable recently in dwelling on her medieval reception than on her inner life. There has been superb study of Kempe’s challenged search for authority and of how she is marginalised in her own society, but perhaps at the price of implicitly accepting her marginality in her professed vocation as a contemplative witness. Part of what makes the Book baffling to modern readers is its apparent lack of unity, its disjointed and uneven narrative, both gritty and bitty. Yet some of this supposed absence of unity stems from the modern disinclination to acknowledge the would-be contemplative viewpoint on material from which Kempe writes, or the sense of progress to which the Book lays claim. Her book is full of journeys, but for Kempe its seemingly inconsequential narrative does add up to a deeper journey, in which the sense of being in via is the spiritual momentum that the Book attains and communicates. In many modern readings, however, Kempe is little more than an impressionable consumer of the contemplative product of her day. Her energy and her loss of inhibition can make her account of her extravagant behaviours into a significant instance of the performativity of a contemplative life as she plays the roles of prophet, pilgrim and holy woman in her contemporary culture.19 No mystic 19 On travel and pilgrimage as performance, see Judith Adler, ‘Travel as Performed Art’, American

Journal of Sociology 94 (1989), pp. 1366–91; Terence N. Bowers, ‘Margery Kempe as Traveler’, Studies in Philology 97 (2000), pp. 1–28; Nanda Hopenwasser, ‘A Performance Artist and Her Performance Text: Margery Kempe on Tour’, in Performance and Transformation: New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality, ed. Mary A. Suydam and Joanna E. Ziegler (Basingstoke, 1999), pp. 97–131; Susan Signe Morrison, Women Pilgrims in Late Medieval England: Private Piety as Public Perfor -

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herself, Kempe’s value is to be a mimic of the experiences contemplative writers describe. In presuming to think herself other than a symptom, Kempe is seen as self-deceived, and her Book can be downplayed as a variably interesting study in self-delusion. What originality her account may possess is diminished to the level of local anecdotage and vividly reported speech. Or so some modern interpretation of Kempe would imply, and there could hardly be a better instance than this: And on a tyme a rekles man, litil chargyng hys owyn schame, wyth wil and wyth purpose, kest a bolful of watyr on hir hevyd, comyng in the strete. Sche, nothyng mevyd therwyth, seyd: ‘God make yow a good man,’ heyly thankyng God therof, as sche dede of many mo other tymes. (chapter 55; p. 271)

On the face of it, here is the Book’s characteristic narrative of inconsequential, even Pinteresque, incident and exchange, although presented as the climactic final words of a chapter. Yet the selfsame experience had been reported of St Bridget, who responded mildly when a pail of dirty water was thrown over her in a Stockholm street by a royal counsellor who had lost influence with the king through the saint’s intervention.20 How is our reading of the Book affected by the discovery that, even when reporting this minor indignity of street-scene victimisation, Kempe may be at some level mimicking and emulating her great role-model, St Bridget of Sweden? It certainly suggests that Kempe may have seen pattern and meaning in reporting other incidents in her Book for which modern scholarship has not yet discovered parallels. It also points up the distinction between the larger political and spiritual frame that gives significance to St Bridget’s experience, and the Book’s seeming blankness about contextualising and theorising Kempe’s experiences, which may consequently appear trivial, absurd and (cumulatively) tiresome. For the nameless man who has the satisfaction of pouring cold water over Margery Kempe may represent the wish-fulfilment of many a modern reader’s barely censored exasperation with her. Where once her medieval neighbours were driven to contempt, derision and ridicule, Kempe’s modern readers cope with what they find embarrassingly incongruous in her book by laughing at her. Not to take Margery Kempe or the Kempe-shaped world quite seriously is to prove oneself superior and knowing – it is an old story. Yet just as the Book shows how strategically Kempe turns laughter and ridicule back against her detractors to confound them, there is still a need in studying and interpreting the Book for a strategy that can question and come to terms with a modern tendency to laugh not with Margery Kempe but at her. In the end, it would be self-defeating, as well as hopelessly over-solemn, not to accept – but instead turn to instructive account – the cultural differences that have made something

mance (London, 2000), ch. 5, ‘Performing Margery Kempe’; cf. also Clare Bradford, ‘Mother, Maiden, Child: Gender as Performance in The Book of Margery Kempe’, in Feminist Poetics of the Sacred: Creative Suspicions, ed. Frances Devlin-Glass and Lyn McCredden (New York, 2001), pp. 165–81. 20 See Windeatt (2000), p. 271 and n. 4604.

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unwittingly and unintendedly amusing for modern readers on more than a few pages of the Book. Despite all her frequent frustrations and anguish, this derives not least from Margery Kempe’s glorious readiness to see God’s work in all and any humdrum incident, however banal. For insofar as The Book of Margery Kempe records, in its own way, a triumphant life, it is also a joyous book.

Part III Approaches to Teaching

10 Teaching Anchoritic Texts: The Shock of the Old ALEXANDRA BARRATT

A

NCRENE Wisse and its associated treatises Hali Meiðhad, Sawles Ward, and the three saints’ lives of Margaret, Katherine and Juliana, have long been hallowed texts in any degree that includes Early Middle English literature. But in other environments they are virtually unknown and, like most medieval texts, have never achieved ‘canonical’ status. We medievalists understandably regard them as extremely important. Not only are they rare and therefore precious examples of Early Middle English prose; they also offer a fascinating insight into the anchoritic life as theorised and presumably practised in thirteenth-century England. Unfortunately, modern students lack easy access to these texts because the language in which they are written is in some ways closer to Anglo-Saxon than to Chaucer’s Middle English. Even more so, the ideologies they embrace – of deliberate solitariness rather than sociability, of contemplation rather than social action, of virginity rather than sexual activity and ‘family values’ – are frequently alien to many contemporary students, even if they happen to be practising Christians. The fascinations these texts undoubtedly hold for professional medievalists generally bear little relation to features that might attract students. The philologists love to study the AB language but, always few in number, they are a dwindling band living mainly in Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Those of a more literary and/or historical bent are preoccupied with such questions as the original language of composition, the complex relationships between the various manuscripts, the mouvance of the text (or texts) and their changing audiences, the possible religious affiliations of the author, and the sources that he used. But our students take little interest in textual matters – the milk is ready packaged, so why worry about the cow? – and would find it as hard to know a Dominican friar from an Augustinian canon as they do to distinguish monks from parish priests when studying Chaucer’s General Prologue. We cannot ignore the fact that there are big problems in teaching these texts, and our students’ linguistic and theological deficiencies are by no means the worst of them. Even more alienating than the language is the extraordinary content. Why, for instance, are the anchoresses compared to pelicans and ‘night ravens in the wilderness’? In addition, for all the talk of his ‘moderation’, the author is hardly likely to find a sympathetic hearing among modern students. Numerous passages from Ancrene Wisse seem to have no other purpose than to

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confirm their worst suspicions about the Middle Ages. What, for instance, are they to make of this? . . . looking at her own white hands does harm to many anchoresses, who have them so fair because they are idle. They should be scraping the earth up every day out of the pit they must rot in! God knows this pit does much good to many an anchoress . . . She who always has her death as though before her eyes remembers that pit . . . she will not lightly follow the flesh’s pleasure after the will’s desire.1

Misogynistic; anti-sex; obsessed with death, corruption and hell: why invest time and effort in pursuing such texts any further? The practical problem of what to do with these texts is borne out by the types of essay and examination questions that are often set. Usually these relate to the author’s ‘use of imagery’. It is clear that those who are reduced to setting such questions are profoundly uneasy with the content of these texts and know it would be asking for trouble to set questions of substance rather than style. The ‘imagery’ question is presumably supposed to be innocuous – both appealing and non-ideological – but even though the imagery of Ancrene Wisse is profoundly interesting on many levels, the Modernist notions of imagery that students still tend to carry around with them are little use when reading these texts. Students who wish to read Ancrene Wisse with understanding need a grounding in medieval scriptural exegesis as much or more than an acquaintance with T. S. Eliot on the Metaphysicals and the Dissociation of Sensibility, or even Freud on the Unconscious. The very strangeness of these texts, however, can work in the teacher’s favour. They can be perceived as exotic, strange and ‘other’, as offering ‘the shock of the old’, as – to use that current buzz-word – ‘counter-intuitive’. In a recent review of The Pilgrim’s Tale, a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox spiritual classic, Brendan Pelphrey referred to his experiences in teaching that text to both Orthodox seminarians and non-Orthodox American students. He observed that ‘non-Orthodox find the stories so foreign to their way of thought and practice as to be strangely compelling’,2 and I think that encapsulates the potential appeal of these anchoritic t exts. But I should say that this is an argument of desperation. Are there better reasons for us to continue teaching these texts? The obvious reason (teleological rather than pedagogical) is that the anchoritic tradition is not only distinctive but also extremely important in medieval England, and consequently important for medieval English literature. England was renowned for the number of its anchorites, who were predominantly female, and in order to approach the Middle English devotional tradition (‘fourteenth-century English mysticism’ or ‘vernacular theology’ or whatever other term may be current) some background in the anchoritic tradition is essential. Julian of Norwich was an anchorite when she wrote A Revelation of Love, even if not at the time of the 1 2

Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, trans. and intro., Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works , The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York & Mahwah, NJ, 1991), pp. 91–2. Mystics Quarterly 27 (2001), p. 89.

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showings; Margery Kempe consulted her, as an anchorite who was ‘expert in swech thyngys and good cownsel cowd yevyn’; while both Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton wrote most of their vernacular treatises for anchoritic women. We cannot therefore simply ignore this tradition, even if we wanted to. How, then, should we teach these texts? Translations are certainly appropriate in History or Religion courses. No one would even think to object, as it is almost inevitable that translations are the rule rather than the exception in such contexts. But I would make no apology for teaching translated texts in literary courses as well. This is possible from a practical point of view, as although there are not many translations available, they are fortunately all good ones and done by reputable Middle English scholars. (This is in contrast to the Julian of Norwich situation, where the versions are numerous enough but too many of dubious quality, and even the best are as much interpretations as translations.) Teaching in translation is not only cheap, convenient and practical. Theoretically, too, it is entirely defensible. The entire history of Ancrene Wisse is of a text that was constantly reworked even in its earliest English forms; translated from the original Early Middle English into Anglo-Norman; completely rearranged in another Old French version; rewritten and adapted to new audiences in later forms of English; and even translated into Latin for a different audience again. Why should our generation be any different? The cheapest and most readily available translation is the Penguin Classics Ancrene Wisse.3 This is a translation of the Corpus manuscript, as is The Ancrene Riwle, translated by M. B. Salu with an introduction by Dom Gerard Sitwell and a preface by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1955 and now available in a welcome reprint.4 Salu translates more freely than White, who has tried to preserve the ‘linguistic patterns’ of the Middle English even at the cost of occasional infelicities (p. xxiv).5 More expensive is Savage and Watson’s Anchoritic Spirituality in the Paulist Press Classics of Western Spirituality series, but this also contains Sawles Warde, Holy Maidenhood, The Wooing of Our Lord and St Katherine.6 In addition, Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne’s Medieval English Prose for Women contains the whole of Hali Meiðhad and Parts 7 and 8 of Ancrene Wisse in the original Middle English with a facing-page Modern English translation, but is relatively expensive.7 Moreover, quite apart from the language problem, for reasons of availability it is difficult – though not as difficult as it was – to teach these texts in the original. As yet, there is no critical edition of Ancrene Wisse that lecturers could quarry for extracts. But we do now have the TEAMS edition of the Corpus version edited by Robert Hasenfratz, which grew out of his own work with graduate students.8 Although the text is as user-friendly as possible and has glosses on the page that virtually constitute a running translation (each page is 3 4 5 6 7 8

Hugh White, trans. and intro., Ancrene Wisse: Guide for Anchoresses (Harmondsworth, 1993). M. B. Salu, trans., The Ancrene Riwle (London, 1955; repr. Exeter, 1990). White, Ancrene Wisse, p. xxiv. See above, note 1. Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds, Medieval Prose for Women: Selections from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse (Oxford, 1990). Robert Hasenfratz, ed., Ancrene Wisse, TEAMS Middle English Text Series (Kalamazoo, 2000).

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roughly half Ancrene Wisse text, half glosses), I doubt that many undergraduates would be able to read it in full. And at US$30.00, it is uncharacteristically expensive for a TEAMS text. There was already a student edition, made from the Cotton Cleopatra version, of the Introduction and Part 1 with translation and commentary. While it is true that this edits ‘an often neglected portion of Ancrene Riwle’,9 the anchoresses’ horarium and devotions (perhaps the aspects of their lives most alien to modern readers) seem a strange choice of subject for student consumption. In many ways Part 4, on Temptations, is of much more general interest: this is the section that was edited ten years later in 1994 from the Corpus manuscript by Yoko Wada.10 The second volume, which was to provide ‘detailed notes and a glossary’,11 has not appeared as far as I know. The edition contains a substantial, though rather traditional, introduction (over 100 pages) but coming out as it did in a Japanese series, it is not easily obtainable. Each sentence is numbered, a practice apparently borrowed from the editing of Classical texts, to make clear the precise correspondence of sentences of the facing-page translation,12 but this does tend to impede the reading of the text as a piece of continuous prose. Finally, there are two editions of Parts 6 and 7, on Penance and on Love, a duplication that may indicate a strong suspicion among experienced teachers that this is the most attractive segment of Ancrene Wisse. We have both Geoffrey Shepherd’s out-of-print 1959 edition of Ancrene Wisse Parts Six and Seven, and Millett and Wogan-Browne’s Middle English Prose for Women (which also contains an edition and translation of Hali Meiðhad). But for a literary course that focuses on writing in Middle English there are further possibilities. One is to investigate the virtues of the Vernon text of Ancrene Wisse. This is the final instalment of the EETS project to make available diplomatic editions of all the versions of Ancrene Wisse, in Middle English, Anglo-Norman and Latin. Now it is hardly possible to use the EETS edition itself,13 which as usual has been made in usum editorum philologorumque (a very select audience). But students might well respond to carefully edited extracts from the Vernon text. The Vernon Manuscript is now dated as ‘end of the fourteenth century’ and students who can cope with Langland and the Pearl-poet might be able to manage its language with the help of modern punctuation and on-page glossing. At least in this way some students could be given a taste of reading the text in the original (or rather, an original). Only experimentation would determine whether this could be significantly easier than reading from the Hasenfratz edition. The other solution is more radical. Perhaps we should abandon Ancrene Wisse and its associated texts altogether, and introduce the fundamental 9 10 11 12 13

Robert W. Ackerman and Roger Dahood, ed. and trans., Ancrene Riwle: Introduction and Part I , Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies 31 (Binghampton, 1984), p. 3. Wada, Yoko, ed., ‘Temptations’ from Ancrene Wisse: Volume One, Kansai University Institute of Oriental and Occidental Studies Sources and Materials Series 18 (Suita, Osaka, 1994). Ibid., p. xi. Ibid., p. c. Arne Zettersten and Bernhard Diensberg, eds, with an introduction by H. L. Spencer, The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: The ‘Vernon’ Text , EETS, OS 310 (Oxford, 2000).

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concepts of anchoritic spirituality by other means. One of the founding anchoritic texts is Aelred of Rievaulx’s brief letter to his sister, De Institutione Inclusarum. Indeed, this is one of the sources used by the author of Ancrene Wisse, and he mentions it by name at least once. There is a modern translation of the Latin original in the Kalamazoo Cistercian Fathers series,14 and it was twice translated into Middle English. The later of the two versions, found in Oxford Bodley MS 483, is potentially an excellent student text. It is a great pity that it languishes in the ivory tower of an EETS edition:15 one would dearly like to rescue it and help it make a bolt for freedom. The virtues of this text are many. First, it is short: under 12,000 words, or about thirty typescript pages. Students can be reasonably expected to read the whole thing – and they should surely be encouraged to study complete texts rather than extracts wherever possible. Secondly, its fifteenth-century English, once allowances have been made for its spelling conventions and basic morphological forms, is really quite easy to read. Thirdly, it is for some reason attractive and appealing. (This is slightly puzzling, given that Aelred is even more of a hard-liner when it comes to ascetic contempt for the flesh than the author of AW.) Most important of all, this brief text covers so many anchoritic bases. It falls neatly into three parts that consist of a consideration of the history and practicalities of the anchoritic life; the cultivation of the virtues of chastity, humility and charity; and growth in the love of God by means of meditation. Each is succinct and can provide the teacher with plenty of hooks on which to hang useful bits of information. Students familiar with this text would have covered a great deal of ground, relatively painlessly. Indeed, Aelred’s text almost looks as if it were designed to provide the core structure for a course on anchoritic and monastic history and spirituality. Even the Middle English title, The Rule of a Recluse, immediately gives the teacher an opportunity to talk about the concept of a religious rule, specifically the Benedictine and perhaps Augustinian Rules, and the role of regulation in the Middle Ages. The first chapter deals with the origins of anchoritism, making a useful distinction between the eremitic and the anchoritic, and would provide a good opportunity to tell students something about the Desert Fathers (and Mothers) and the ascetic spirituality of the early Church. It modulates rapidly, however, into a satirical consideration of the abuses of this life in the Middle Ages and the absence of a true spirit of solitude. Here one could discuss Cistercianism and its nostalgia for primitive monasticism, and maybe the semi-eremitical Carthusian Order. Chapter 2 deals with the economic basis of this life, introducing the unfamiliar and difficult idea of a complete disjunction between the anchoress and the world that entails conscious refusal to engage in almsgiving, hospitality and educational activities. It also offers the opportunity to discuss the differences between anchoresses and nuns, as well as the primitive

14 Mary Paul MacPherson, trans., Aelred of Rievaulx: Treatises and the Pastoral Prayer , Cistercian

Fathers 2 (Kalamazoo, 1971). 15 John Ayto and Alexandra Barratt, eds, Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Institutione Inclusarum: Two English

Translations, EETS, OS 287 (Oxford, 1984).

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Benedictine and Cistercian ideal of self-support through manual labour and its alternative, the mendicant ideal of humble reliance on friends and relatives for a bare subsistence living. Chapter 3 drives home the points about hospitality, almsgiving and education, all of which contrast so strongly with the Benedictine Rule’s instructions in those areas. It also covers the anchoress’s minimal household establishment and provides the chance to introduce the very important idea of enclosure. The text then moves on to details of the anchoress’s conduct, significantly beginning with the requirement for extensive periods of silence. One could explore here the motif of ‘sins of the tongue’ (and the medieval conviction that women were particularly prone to commit them), as well as silence as a positive ascetic and monastic ideal. This chapter also dwells on the anchoress’s relationships with men which, needless to say, are to be minimised. The thorny subject of chastity will loom large in this text, and Aelred is to deal with it at greater length later, but here it is at least introduced. The following chapter regulates when speech is allowed and involves an appreciation of the Church calendar, the timetable distinctions between summer and winter, and the monastic horarium, topics that could be pursued in greater or less detail as appropriate. By now students may be wondering what anchoresses actually did, as up to now the text has mainly prescribed what they are not to do. Chapter 7 tells us ‘how a recluse should be occupied’, instilling the idea that ‘idleness is the enemy of the soul’ and proposing a balanced diet of liturgical and private prayer, reading and manual labour. Here one could introduce the concepts of oratio, lectio and contemplatio, or of the lectio divina. Some information about the canonical Hours and perhaps by extension the liturgy of the medieval Church would also be appropriate. Aelred then provides specific instructions for Lent, which also gives an opportunity to introduce the concept of asceticism, especially fasting and abstinence, and other forms of physical self-discipline. Chapter 8 takes these outward manifestations of asceticism further in relation to the anchoress’s food and clothing. At this point Aelred changes direction, pointing out that up to now he has been talking about outward things. The next five chapters deal with the recluse’s ‘inner conversation’ or interior dispositions, in particular the cultivation of the virtues of chastity, humility and charity. Chapters 9 and 10 introduce the inevitable subject of virginity and chastity, the standard scriptural arguments that underpin it, and the standard tropes: virginity is a precious treasure, too easily lost; Christ is the virgin’s spouse; virginity is more than physical intactness. Poverty and asceticism provide some guarantee of safety but only God can truly protect it. Resist temptation by meditating on the lives of such virgin martyrs as Agnes, Cecilia and Lucy (cross-references could be made to the various treatments of these saints’ lives in Middle English). Also, practice asceticism – ‘chastity may not be kept in young folk without great affliction of body’ (Aelred follows this up with a cautionary tale about a man who was constantly assailed by sexual temptation in spite of his extreme ascetic practices) and take refuge in lectio divina. Naturally this leads on, in chapter 11, to a discussion of physical asceticism and the arguments brought against it by the unenlightened. Aelred is no proponent of discretion: for him, true discretion is ‘to put the body

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beneath the soul by subjection’, so there is much material here to introduce discussion about the body-soul dichotomy in medieval thought. But students need to appreciate that, like most medieval moralists, Aelred does not exalt chastity at the cost of other virtues. In the following chapter he stresses the need for humility, as ‘the ground of all virtues’. He does this mainly by considering its opposite, pride, of which he offers a brief but incisive analysis, dividing it into ‘bodily’ and ‘ghostly’ pride, both of which are forms of boasting and vainglory. Aelred then discusses how the virtues can be woven together to produce a ‘motley coat’ or wedding garment, whose golden hem is charity. The next chapter describes how the recluse’s chapel should be fitted out, and explores the symbolic load to be carried by the linen altar cloth and the rood screen. It provides a neat and manageable example of the systematic use of medieval allegory. Aelred then reverts to a more detailed exposition of charity – love of God, love of one’s neighbour – which includes what must be the classic medieval exegesis of the Martha and Mary story. This presents the heart of the contemplative ideal, which it is clear that many people in the Middle Ages found as hard to accept as people today. Anyone, then or now, can applaud active charity, but most find it hard to understand a way of life that deliberately refuses to help one’s neighbour in practical ways, however great the need. What can the anchoress offer instead? Intercessory prayer is to be the manifestation of her charity. So much for the love of neighbour. What of the love of God? The rest of Aelred’s brief treatise discourses ‘of the love of God, how thou shalt love him’. This love is manifested in two ways: ‘virtuous working of the body’, already discussed at length, and ‘desire of the soul’, nurtured by holy meditations. Aelred therefore proceeds to offer his sister a series of specimen meditations that are glorious examples of affective spirituality. The first, and longest, is an extended meditation on the life of Christ, during which the anchoress is to recreate imaginatively, with herself as observer and participant, the events of Scripture. This passage will remind the student of the Gospel accounts of Christ’s earthly life, even in some cases introduce them. But as the meditation is also exactly the type of spiritual exercise that initially formed Julian of Norwich, and that Margery Kempe practised enthusiastically all her life, it makes an excellent introduction to both later writers. If there is time to teach only one extract from Aelred, this would be the ideal choice. The second meditation is severely reduced in the Middle English. In the Latin it is Aelred’s lament for his lost virginity but in the translation it is simply a consideration of God’s goodness to us. Finally, the third meditation, on death and judgement, is again a classic of the genre and can be usefully related to the numerous Middle English lyrics on death and such prose t exts as The Art of Dying. The text provided below is based on the EETS edition, but with the thorns and yoghs replaced by their modern typographical equivalents and the punctuation somewhat enhanced. The amount of glossing required would vary from class to class, but all the basic material is available in the Glossary to the EETS edition, to which students could be encouraged to refer. The text thus presented could stand alone as an example of guidance writing for anchoresses or could be

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propaedeutic to further readings in Walter Hilton and Richard Rolle. Indeed, it might even induce some students – and their teachers – to plunge yet again into the chilly waters of the intellectual asceticism of Ancrene Wisse.

Appendix Edited Extract from The Rule of a Recluse Capitulum xiv: Hou a recleuse shuld encresse the love of Jesu in hir soule by meditacion of thinges whiche ben passed. Also of the meditacion of thinges that ben present. Also by meditacion of thinges whiche ben to come Thus moche have I seyde of the love of neighbore; now shal I telle the of the love of God, hou thou shalt love him. To the love of God longeth too thinges: desire of the soule and worchinge of the body. Desire of the soule lyethe in the swetnes of gostly love; vertuous worchinge of the body stondith in a maner of lyvynge, the whiche is in fastinge, in wakynge, in laboure, in prayenge, in redynge, in silence, in povert and suche other. The desire of thy soule is norsshed with holy meditacions. Than if the love of Jesu shuld growe and encresse in thy desire, thre thinges the nedeth to have in mynde. That is, thinges the whiche ben passed, thinges that ben present and thinges whiche ben to come. As touchinge to the first, whan thy soule is purged clerly from alle unclene thoughtes, than entre into that pryve chambre where oure blessed Lady praide devoutly unto the tyme the aungel grette hir, beholdyng bisely hou she was occupied with redynge of suche prophecies in the whiche weren profecyed Cristis comynge thorugh a maydens birthe. Abyde there awhile and thou shalt se hou the aungel cometh and gretith hir, seieng thus: Ave Maria, gracia plena, dominus tecum. Although thow be astonyed of this seconde comynge, natheles dresse the upward and grete Oure Lady with the aungel and saye, Ave Maria gracia et cetera ; reherse and efte reherse the saam, merveilynge what fulnes of grace this might be, of the whiche al the worlde is fulfilled. Also beholde and mervaile the with devocyon, what lord this myght be, the whiche vouchith-saaf to ben enclosed in a maydens wombe; than speke to hir and say, ‘O blessed Lady, what swetnesse myght that be that thou were fulfilled with? What fire might that be, that thou were enflaumed with, whan a blessed lord chees a bodily substaunce, verray blode and flesshe of thy body, and whan thou felist the presence of his gostly majeste in thy blessed wombe?’ This shuld be a maydens meditacion. Than goo furth with hir into the mountaynes and beholde the gretynge bitwene hir and Elizabeth, where also the servaunt knewe his lorde and with passynge joye dide him reverence, enclosed yit in the moder wombe. Mayde, what dost

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thou now? I praie the, renne furth and annexe the to that joye; falle doun to ever-either feet and in the maydens wombe wurshipe thy lorde and thyn husbonde, and in the wombe of the tother beholde louely thy frende. Yit the nedeth to folewe hir firther into Bethleem with gret devocyon and whan thou comest there, be to hir obsequyous atte birthe of hir childe, and than breke oute and say with the prophete: Parvulus natus est nobis, et filius datus est nobis. That is to say, ‘A litel blessed childe is born to us and a graciouse sone is yoven to us.’ Leeve not for no shame, but that thou kisse the cracche the whiche he lay in; putte away drede with affeccyon, and shame with love. After this occupye thy mynde upon the shepherdes wakyng wacche and upon the songe of aungels; to that blessed melody put the boldely in prees, bothe with hert and mouthe syngynge: Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra, pax hominibus bone voluntatis. Foryete not in thy meditacion the offrynge of thre kinges, ne forsake not his company whan he fledde into Egipte, but folewe him with as gret devocyon as he can yeve the. Were it not, trowist thou, a faire meditacyon to beholde hym, hou he obeyed to his moder, helpyng his norisshe Joseph? What and thou soughtist him in Jerusalem with his moder, sittynge in the temple amonge doctours, techynge and axinge questions? O what abundaunce of teres shuldist thou than have, whan thou herdist the moder mekely rebuke the childe, seyeng thus: Fili, quid fecisti nobis sic? Pater tuus et ego dolentes querebamus te. That is to say, ‘Sone, why hastow do to us so? Thy fader and I with gret sorwe have sought the.’ Wilt thou yit se pryvyer thynges? Go furthe to the place wher he was baptised and there shalt thou here the Fader in a voyce, the Sone in the flesshe, the Holy Gost in liknes of a culver. Folewe yit this mayde unto the feste of Architriclyne and there beholde a gostly weddynge and water turned into wyne; preye than thy gostly spouse Jesu that thy water of teres mown be turned into delicyous wyne of brennynge love. Yit passe further and beholde what Jesu saide to the womman the whiche was accused of avoutrye; ymagyne here hou mercifully, hou pitously, hou louely, how graciously he lyfte up his eyen, and hou swetly he assoiled hir whan he had ashamed hir accusours and seyde: Nemo condempnavit te, mulier, nec ego te condempnabo. Vade et iam amplius noli peccare . That is to say, ‘Womman, noo-body hath condempned the ne I condempne the not; go now and be in wille to synne no more.’ Praye him here that thou mowe disserve to here his blessed voys, though thou be unworthy. Who is he, trowist thou, wil condempne, if he say, ‘I wil not condempne’? Certeyn, noon. Wilt thou se moor? Go forthe into the pharisees hous and se hou thy lorde is sette atte mete. Seest thou not hou Mary Magdalen, that blessed synner, wash Jesus feet with teres and dried hem with her heres and swetly kissed hem? At last she anoynted hem with an holy oynement; go furthe and do the saam and if he wil denye it the, lette not therfore, but go, procede furth contynuely with besy praier; beholdynge hym with thy soor wepynge and weylinge, axe hym that

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thou desirest. Wrastle with him as Jacob dide, that he may be joyful to be overcome of the. It semeth otherwhile that Jesu turneth away from the and, as it were, hydeth hys feet from the, yit natheles praye and crye to hym with an unpacyent love. Certeyn, if thou crye so, he wil not denye his feet fro the to be moysted with thy teres, that vouched-saaf to suffre hem be kyssed of a synner. Bythenke the firthermoor and se now hou a man that had the palseye was leyde at Jesus feet, axinge help of body and nothynge elles, and yit Our Lorde by his merveilous mekenes and unspecable mercy graunted hym that he axed and yaf him therto helthe of soule, sayinge thus: Remittuntur tibi, fili, peccata tua; that is, ‘Sone, thy synnes ben foryeve; ryse and goo.’ Now lyfte up thin hondes and pray to hym with snobbynge teres, that he vouche-saaf to foryeve the thy synnes. And thou wolt do wel, yit go further into Bethanye, where the blessed bondes of love and frendship were knytte for evere bitwene Oure Lorde and Mary Magdalen and Martha and Lazarus. Truste right wel, he loved wel Lazar, wytnes of the blessed teres that he wepte for hym. Beholde now what was doon to Oure Lord when he was sette atte soper: Martha served, Lazarus saat with him atte soper, and Mary anoynted hym. Art thou not wel apayde to se thys? Truste right wel, this last office longith to the. Therfore breke the harde alebastir boxe of thyn hert and that that is within of devocyon, of love, of desire or of affeccyon, helde it on Jesu thy spouses heed, wurshipynge God in man and man in God. Though the pharise grucche with the as he dyde with Mary, charge it not, for Jesu will excuse the. Leeve not this blessed idelnes for Marthays besynesse, for treuly thou hast chose the best partye. Arise now and lete us go hens; whider, trowist thou? Certayn, to folowe hym into Jerusalem, beholdynge hym hou he rideth on an asse towarde hys passyon. Leeve hym not now but go with him into the hous where he made a soper to his disciples. Be not ashamed, although thou be a womman, to come amonge men; let love put away shame, or elles stonde afer as a pore womman and axe som almes with wepyng teres. Loke up now, I praye the, seest thou not who is he that leieth his heed so homly in Cristys lappe? He is a blessed man, whatsoevere he be. I praye the, what hatte he? Certes his name is John. O John, what grace, what swetnes, what devocion foundist thou there, I praye the telle me? Certeyn theryn is al the tresour, I trowe, of wisdom and konnynge hyd, for it is a welle of mercy, an hous of pyte and an honycombe of everlastynge swetnes. Blessed John, hou disservedist thou to come to this grace? Whethir thou be hyer than Petir and holyer than Andrew, worthier than James? This, woot I wel, is a specyal privilege, certeyn, I trowe, for thou art a mayde chosen of Oure Lord; go to the mayde now and axe hym som part of this swetnesse to norisshe with thy devocion. Herkne now, herkne, herist thow not what Oure Lord saith to his Fader for his disciples? Pater, serva eos in nomine meo ; that is, ‘Fader, kepe my disciples in my name, for I wil that where I am, they ben with me.’ Bowe down thyn heed, that thou be oon of thoo. O here is good abidynge, ho-so myght tarye, bot thou

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must yit go ferther and folewe hym, as it were al afer, unto the Mounte of Olyvete, and forsake him not. Although he toke with hym Petir and John and James to trete with hem of the counceyle of his passyon, yit he forbiddith the not, and thou wilt come. Seest thou not now hou he fallith doun and praieth and how he swetith blood for anguisshe of his passyon? Why stondist thou stille? Go furthe and gadere up clene these swete dropes, for certeyn they ben ful preciouse; slepe not now as Petir dide. Beholde where Judas that traytour cometh with a companye of peple to take Oure Lord: he kisseth; they bynden his blessed hondes togiders and streyned hem ful soor. Maist thou suffre this? I trowe, nay! I woot now hou it stondeth with the: thyn hert is fulfilled with pyte. I holde it no wonder, yit suffir a while and thou shalt se moor. Folewe him into the paleys and beholde hou unkyndely they ferden with him. Se now how pitously, hou mercifully, hou graciously he beholdeth Petir, that thryes denyed hym atte voys of a womman, wepynge bitterly for sorwe; and pray him that he vouche-saaf to beholde the with his merciful eye, that so ofte hast forsake him atte voys of a womman, the whiche is thyn owne flesh, with wicked werkes and unleful affeccyons. Beholde now and se hou he stondeth as a meke lombe before the juge, bowynge down his heed and his eyen, spekynge fewe, redy to suffre repreves and betynge. Se than hou his face is buffeted, his heed is crowned with thornes, and his hondes despitously bounden with bondes. I woot wel thou maist not suffre this, natheles yit loke up with thyn wepynge eyen and beholde hou he berith his cros to his passyon with a clothe of purpure arrayed, clevynge ful sore to his forbeten woundes. Now is he nayled to the cros and yoven eysel, medled with galle, to drynke, hangynge bytwene too theves. Heven and erthe han mervaile; hast thou no mervaile? I trowe, yhis, for if heven and erthe ben sory, thou must nedes be sory. If stones breke, thyn hert must nedys breke. If wommen wepten beside his passyon, thou must nedes wepe. And amonge alle thinges, have mynde on his blessed pacience, hou he shewed pyte for wronge: he heled hem that wounded him, he gate hem lyf that slowe him; with what swetnes, what charite, trowist thou, he saide these wordes: Pater, ignosce illis quia nesciunt quid faciunt . That is to say, ‘Fader, foryeve hem for they wyte not what they doon.’ Falle down to his feet and beseche him that his blessed Passyon mote commende the to his Fader, seyenge thus, ‘Fader, foryeve hem her trespas.’ Seest thou not how Oure Lady wepith? What eyleth the that thou maist not wepe? Why ben thyn eyen so drye, and thorugh the soule of Oure Lady wente a swerde of sorwe? Hou maistow here him speke to his moder, ‘Womman, lo thy sone’, withoute snobbynge? An harde hert is that, the whiche may not wepe now.

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Crepe into that blessed syde where that blood and water cam forthe, and hyde the ther as a culver in the stoon, wel likynge the dropes of his blood, til that thy lippes be maad like to a reed scarlet hood. Abyde a while; seest thou not al afer, wher an auncyent man cometh, Joseph of Armathye? Stonde styl and se what that blessed man wil do. Als sone as he cometh, he undoth the nayles of his hondes and feet and byclippeth that swete body with his blessed armes for-to burye it; certeyn he myght wel say than, as I fynde in a boke of love: Fasciculus mirre dilectus meus mihi, that is to say, ‘My wel beloved Jesu is to me a boundel of myrre.’ Folewe this precious tresoure and helpe to bere up eyther feet or hondes, or elles go behynde and gadre up the smale dropes of blood that fallen by the way. Se nou hou softly, hou swetly, thay anoynteden that blessed body with bawme and wyndeth it in sendel and so burieth it. Wiltow now do wel? Go nowe furthe with Mary Magdalen and ordeyne for oynementes ayenst the day of his resurreccyon, and than shalt thou se and here hou Oure Lord spekith to Mary, clepynge hir by hir name, ‘Mary’. O this was a swete voyce, a softe voyce and a jocunde; at thys voyce alle the veynes of hir body dissolved and stilled oute teres of swete devocyon. O blessed Mary, what devocion, what affeccyon, what desire, what brennynge of love was ther, whan thou aunswerdist, ‘Raby,’ that is to say, ‘Maister.’ Treuly I trowe thy plentevous wepynge wolde suffre the say no moor, for thou were stopped with desire of love. Bot that was an harde worde and an untolerable whan he seyde to the: Noli me tangere; that is, ‘Mary, touche me not.’ Certys yit woldist thou not leeve therfore, for treuly I trowe thyn herte wold brest for wepynge but if thou haddist touched hym. Gode suster, do thou the saam, although the seme that he withdraweth, and wil not suffre the that thou touche him by swetnes of devocyon; lette not therfore but abide awhile and it shal be right wel. Here now hou he comforted Mary ayen, after that he had seyde this worde, ‘Touche me not’: ‘Mary, drede the not, for though I deferre hem now, I wil not withdrawe hem fro the; go now first and telle my brethren that I am rysen, and than come ayen.’ Now renne thou fast with Mary, if thou wilt sone come ayen; hir erande was sone doo. Than cam she not alone but with other wommen, and Oure Lorde of his curtesy mette hem in the way and grette hem. What moor? Than he yaf hem leeve to touche his feet: Accesserunt et tenuerunt eum. ‘And thay nyeden nye and touched him.’ Gode sustir, abide here as longe as thou maist and fede thy soule with these delicious meditacions.

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Glosses longeth belong; worchinge work, labour; stondith consists; wakynge keeping vigil; the nedeth it is necessary for you; clerly completely; pryve private; grette greeted ; bisely diligently; dresse the upward raise yourself; reherse and efte reherse repeat again and again; fulfilled filled; mervaile the wonder, marvel; vouchith-saaf vouchsafes, condescends; chees chose; verray true; gostly spiritual; passynge surpassing; renne run; annexe the unite yourself; ever-either both; louely humbly; obsequyous helpful; breke burst; yoven given; cracche manger; wakyng wacche vigil; put the . . . in prees bear your part; norisshe foster-father; and if; doctours learned men; pryvyer more secret; culver dove; Architriclyne master of the feast; mown may; avoutrye adultery; louely amiably; disserve deserve; wash washed; heres hair; lette not do not leave off; wrastle wrestle (see Genesis 32: 24); snobbynge sobbing; apayde pleased; office function; helde pour; grucche with oppose; charge it not do not care about it; besynesse activity; homly intimately; lappe bosom; hatte is called; konnynge knowledge; hyer higher, more exalted ; mayde virgin; oon of thoo one of those; ho-so myght tarye i.e. if anyone might linger; a-fer at a distance; trete . . . of discourse on; counceyle secrets; streyned tied tightly; ferden with acted towards; unleful unlawful; repreves reproaches ; despitously mercilessly; clevynge clinging; forbeten battered; eysel vinegar; slowe slew; eyleth ails; reed . . . hood red head-band (see Canticles 4: 3); byclippeth embraces; boundel of myrre bunch of myrrh (see Canticles 1: 12); bawme balsam; sendel fine silk; ordeyne make provision; stilled oute exuded; brennynge burning; stopped silenced; nyeden nye came near.

11 Introducing the Mystics R. S. ALLEN

A

S we all know, mystical writing is itself a paradox: the Ineffable is itransmitted by voice and image, and these are then to be inscribed for an audience. All record of perceptions under rapture can only be approximations to the event itself. Mystics write under a burning urge to convey their primary experience, in such a way that the reader can read back behind or through it, and them, to their primary contact. Students today, trained to focus on the text itself rather than the idea of an author, should find mystical writing easier to engage with. Critical interest in biography and autobiography, and especially in Freudian readings of literature, works against real engagement with mystical purpose. ‘Who is this writer’, rather than ‘what and how is this writing’, becomes a distraction that it is hard even for instructors to avoid. Talking back but speaking out is just one of the paradoxes of mystical writing. However, students familiar with using a variety of critical approaches find mystical writing a rich source of interest, open to all sorts of different interpretive methods. How then to introduce students to the Middle English mystics?1 We are honour bound to continue the work that the authors themselves feel a great urgency to attempt: the instruction of others in what has been made known to them. Many of them are highly gifted communicators whose impact on those who share the foundations of their own faith has been maintained across the centuries. Julian of Norwich, not well known, it seems, in her own lifetime, has gathered a huge following in the last hundred years, perhaps for the very last reason she would have wanted, the attraction of her own gracious personality (here and throughout the essay I quote from the Long Text of her work): I pray you al for Gods sake and counsel you for your owne profitt that ye levyn the beholding of a wretch that it was shewid to, and mightily,

1

Nicholas Watson has recently challenged the term ‘Middle English mystics’, seeing the five writers normally so described as part of an innovative and democratising tendency in vernacular theology that began in the pastoral manuals of the 1350s and climaxed at the end of the fourteenth century with the writings of the Cloud-author, Julian of Norwich and Langland, and which was abruptly terminated after 1409 in the wake of Archbishop Arundel’s anti-Lollard Constitutions: see Nicholas Watson, ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature , ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 539–65, esp. pp. 542–5, 559–62.

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wisely and mekely behold God, that of his curtes love and endles godenes wolde shewyn it generally in comfort of us al. (chapter 8)2

But we are teachers of English, or of History or Women’s Studies, not theologians, and we cannot teach the ‘work’ of the Cloud author. In fact, the Prologue and penultimate chapter of the Cloud always make me feel I should not be reading, let alone teaching, the text: Fleshely ianglers, opyn preisers and blamers of hemself or of any oþer, tiþing tellers, rouners and tutilers of tales & alle maner of pinchers: kept I neuer þat þei sawe þis book. (Prologue)3

The same prohibition appears nearly word for word later in the work (chapter 74), the writer adding that his ‘entent was neuer to write soche þing to hem. And þerfore [he] wolde not þat þei herde it . . . ’4 The text, that is, is a sealed fount of wisdom to everyone who is not an aspiring mystic. Few of us can escape the uneasy awareness that we are just some of ‘þees corious lettrid men’, for it ‘acordeþ noþing to us’.5 Hodgson quotes St Bernard’s definition of ‘curiosity’ as the exercise of ‘love of abstract speculation for its own sake and without bearing on the quest for salvation’.6 We may indeed find ourselves simply pointing out the tradition a writer like the Cloud-author inherited, his adaptation of it, and the intricacy of his method of instruction. We are to present the texts to students who would never wish to share the author’s aspiration to the ‘hie
st pointe of þis contemplatiue acte’.7 It is our responsibility to provide students with the means of approaching these writers. One way to do this is to provide background information about the religious beliefs and practices of the Middle Ages. In so doing, we have to acknowledge the variety of assumptions that our students may bring to the texts. Ours is a period of great cultural diversity; our students come from many different faith backgrounds, may have deep faith or none at all. There will certainly be those for whom ideas about sin and redemption or private prayer are unfamiliar. Teachers in the United Kingdom have an urgent reason to make the effort: Lord Ouseley’s recent (2001) report on race relations in Bradford stresses the need for all young people to be aware of each others’ beliefs, and the new Citizenship course for secondary school children, if followed through in the classroom, may mean that they have a broad general interest in religious faith and faiths well before, as students from very different backgrounds, they mix at university.8 But there remains the difficult process of introducing all students to 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Marion Glasscoe, ed., Julian of Norwich: A Revelation of Love (Exeter, rev. edn, 1993), p. 13. Phyllis Hodgson, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises (Exeter, 1982; earlier published as EETS OS 218 (1944) and 231 (1955)), p. 2. Ibid., p. 73. Ibid., Prologue, p. 2. Ibid., p. 155. Ibid., p. 2. Bradford report is available at http://www.bradford2020.com/pride, as ‘Community Pride not Prejudice: Making Diversity Work in Bradford’ (2001), chaired by Sir Herman (later Lord) Ouseley. See the report from Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector for Schools, ‘Preparation for the Introduction of

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a largely superseded social, religious and cultural lifestyle in which to contextualise the writing of the Middle English mystics we are considering. One solution might be to send students to a study of mystical writers like Marion Glasscoe’s English Medieval Mystics.9 In chapter 1, within an outline of contemplation as enlightenment and vision, this work lays out every facet of medieval Christianity: the theology of sin and redemption; relevant aspects of Church reforms and liturgical practice; information about the spiritual disposition of contemplative and active lives; developments in lay piety, by way of instruction in the seven sacraments and by way of primers and religious lyrics; information about continental religious women; comment on major religious texts and spiritual miscellanies; and much more. Students cry out for just such a comprehensive introduction to the medieval Church. Perhaps a more practical solution is to direct students to chapters 5 and 6 of Dee Dyas’s Images of Faith,10 and to R. N. Swanson’s anthology Catholic England, where the chapter ‘Designs for Living and Dying’ sets out, in the shape of extracts from The Abbey of the Holy Ghost, Hilton’s Mixed Life and The Book of the Craft of Dying, the basic tenets of medieval faith in everyday life, and presents religious life under the figure of the Abbey.11 Seminar discussion of these will prepare for reading anchoritic texts and show why people read spiritual texts, and will reveal by contrast how very rarefied the world of the Cloud-author is. In his calm and measured tones in Mixed Life, Hilton comes across almost like a responsible university tutor: Bot of certeyne thynges the by-houes be warre in þi meditacion. Sum sall I tell þe. Ane, þat when þou hase had a gastely thoghte ouþer in ymagynynge of þe manhede of our lorde or of swylke bodily thynges, and þi saule has bene fedde and comforthed þer-with, and passes away by þe-selfe: be þou noghte to besy for to kepe it still by maystry; for it sall þan turne to pyne and to bitternes. Also if it passe noghte away bot duellis still in thi mynd . . . and þer-fore it reuys the fra þi slepe on nyghtys, or elles on dayes fra oþer gud dedis, þis is noghte wele: þou sall wilfully breke of whene [tyme] askis . . . Bot if þou do so elles þou dusse noghte wysely as me thynke.12

Don’t lose sleep over your essays, and don’t skip lectures for your paid work: ‘it

Citizenship in Secondary Schools 2001–2002’ (July 2002), the final report is at http://www.nfer.ac.uk/ research/post16.asp. 9 Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993). 10 Dee Dyas, Images of Faith in English Literature 700–1500 (London & New York, 1997), pp. 101–69 (ch. 5, ‘The Church in the World: Piers Plowman and The Canterbury Tale’; ch. 6, ‘The Contemplative Life: Anchorites and Mystics’). Both Dyas and Glasscoe have excellent glossaries on the Bible, on Church history, worship and organisation, and on theological and spiritual terms. 11 Robert Swanson, Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance before the Reformation (Manchester, 1993). 12 Ch. 27, Carl Horstmann, ed., Yorkshire Writers, I (London, 1895), p. 290. I quote from Mixed Life throughout this essay from the version in the Thornton MS, MS Lincoln Cathedral 91, edited in Horstmann, pp. 264–92. For a more recent edition of Mixed Life, from a different manuscript, see S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson, ed., Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life Edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472 (Salzburg, 1986).

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es spedfull for till hafe discrecyon in
our wyrkynge’.13 Students relate to time management: fitting in paid work, essay deadlines and domestic responsibilities are their world too. It is not our role to indoctrinate students in the medieval belief system shared by the English mystics. Nor should they critique the values they find in the texts they read. Instead they should understand them as another response to universal problems like poverty, social unrest, endemic plague – is life so very different now? It may be more important to help them see the pressures, anxieties and consolations of the Middle Ages, and to place the mystical/devotional writings within the mindset not of the mystical writers themselves but of their intended audience. Arts students have keen imaginative sympathy with others’ problems and can manage difference rather well.

Visionaries and Heretics The option course I taught regularly included heretics as well as visionaries. It was, that is, about writers who, notwithstanding their professions of complete orthodoxy, seem to inhabit a dangerous border territory between orthodoxy and heterodoxy (the ‘mystics’) or who are judged by ecclesiastical authority to have crossed that border (‘heretics’). I did not teach the texts in Middle English. This was because our students – and not all of them – took only a ten-week introductory course in Middle English, with a handful of texts, before coming on to the option course. Reading a little Chaucer and Malory, and a couple of fourteenth-century romances, hardly equipped them to read complex devotional material in non-East Midland dialects. Forced to grapple with ideas alien to them, from a period of which they knew little, students could not be expected to read texts in a language that was a mystery as well. In the main, therefore, I used translated or glossed editions. Students taking other medieval options often elected to read Julian and Margery Kempe in the original. Since we also looked at translated extracts from the writings of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, the appearance of the central texts in modern English should have seemed less odd to the students, though I remain conscious of how much they lost by so studying the works. A different text was covered each week. Through seminar discussion of the main text and copied handouts, we shared views on the impact of the week’s text both in its time and for us. For some time now I have not lectured: students prefer to work things out themselves, though the system fails if they have not read the text, and if too much of it has been set for the week’s reading. Originally, assessment was by seminar presentation, worth 20 percent of the course mark, and 3,000-word essay, worth 80 percent; later, I set a written exercise and 2,500-word essay, worth 20 percent and 80 percent of the total mark respectively.

13 Ch. 27, Horstmann, p. 291.

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In response to requests for additional background information and critical material, I subsequently accompanied the texts for study with a plentiful supply of extracts from critical and explanatory articles and chapters, made possible, providentially, by the relaxation of the copyright laws just as I was preparing the course packs. This, used to promote class discussion, produced ecstatic comments from some students who found it a great help for independent work. It also produced a dramatic change in the essays submitted. The essays of previous years tended to focus too much on the ‘general background’ and paid too little attention to the texts themselves; essays produced under the new arrangements were challenging, original and exciting to read. Presentations, too, were mostly sparky and inventive. Two students subjected The Cloud of Unknowing to Freudian analysis, which they had studied on another option course. Two of the brightest students gave a joint presentation on Pavlovian conditioning as a way of reading Ancrene Wisse in a dramatic scene redolent of third degree torture; the student audience, who had actually enjoyed the text, responded thoughtfully and agreed to differ. Two Muslim students did a presentation on Hilton, in particular his teaching on the reformation of the soul, and concluded with a very distinctive application of Hilton’s own teaching method by inviting us to take instruction in Islam. Another group did an audiovisual presentation on the idea of climbing to God. Yet another dramatised a confrontation between an interrogator and a believer; this presentation was meant to illustrate the instructional method of Ancrene Wisse but could have been easily extended to investigate the experience of, say, William Thorpe before the archbishop of Canterbury.14 Underpinning much of this work I detect the view that thinking people in the Middle Ages must have undermined Church authority covertly or overtly: that the cycle plays were surely subversive of Church authority; that women could never have been really illiterate, or have accepted male dominance; and so on. I have tried to help students connect with a habit of thought that accepts humility, silence, self-abasement and self-abnegation. A few final observations about the course may be in order. One colleague thought the ‘Heretics and Visionaries’ title (inappropriately?) sexy. The course was a reworking of a general introduction to medieval religion. The term ‘heretics’ of the title seems to have led some students to expect weird beliefs, supernatural events and grotesque punishments: something akin to witchcraft, almost. The specifically mystical part of the course was reached when we discussed physical enclosure as an anchorite, focusing on Ancrene Wisse, which continues to amaze and fascinate students, and uniting the motifs of suffering and transcendence. When Leo Sherley-Price’s translation of Hilton’s Scale suddenly went out of print, and I was unable to use Hilton on the course, I substituted Hali Meiðhad, which produced some very positive and perceptive responses. This gave me the idea of converting the course. In any case, I had come to think that it was too ambitious to expect students to deal with orthodoxy, heresy

14 Anne Hudson, ed., Two Wycliffite Texts, EETS OS 301 (Oxford, 1993).

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and mysticism within ten weeks. I abandoned the comprehensive theological framework I had been attempting to provide, and used the female point of view as a new way in. The new course would concentrate on women’s response to the religious impulse, extending beyond, what first I thought of as a title for it, ‘Women as Visionaries’ to the more general ‘Women and Medieval Religion’. The aim of the ‘Heretics and Visionaries’ course had been: ‘to explore individualism in the context of late medieval religion in England as found in the writings of the time’. The new course, ‘Women and Medieval Religion’, aimed ‘to explore individualism and the problems of seeking self-expression as a woman in the Middle Ages’.

Women and Medieval Religion In this course, therefore, we looked at women as mystics, as rebels, as mouthpieces for their sex and, inevitably, as scapegoats for male dominance. The course ranged over continental as well as English writings. It began with virginity (Hali Meiðhad),15 and moved easily to the Virgin Mary and popular devotion by way of Marian lyrics.16 Next, students were introduced to affective piety in The Wooing of Our Lord 17 and extracts from Hildegard of Bingen. Ancrene Wisse and writings by and about the Beguines shifted the focus to women as proactive figures, further investigated in the Passio (suffering and death) of St Margaret (in the version contemporary with Ancrene Wisse, Seinte Marherete),18 in the Beguine Margaret Porete’s Mirror for Simple Souls 19 and in the confession of the Lollard Hawisia Mone.20 I extended the examples of affective piety by including extracts from continental women mystics (Hildegard, Mechthild of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Bridget of Sweden), using especially Alexandra Barratt’s excellent anthology.21 It is fairly easy now to obtain translated texts, or at least extracts, and commentaries, though for Hadewijch, who proved so popular that students (like Oliver Twist) asked for more, it was harder to get longer extracts. Mechthild of Magdeburg also attracted students. The new edition of selections from Hildegard’s work in Penguin22 should prove ideal, and more volumes of this kind would be much welcomed. The course ended with a week each on

15 For a modern edition, see Bella Millett and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds, Medieval Prose for Women:

Selections from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse (Oxford, 1990), pp. 3–41. 16 We used the relevant lyrics in R. T. Davies, ed., Medieval English Lyrics (London, 1963) and critical

material in Douglas Gray, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Lyric (London, 1972). 17 For a modern translation, see Anne Savage and Nicholas Watson, trans. and intro., Anchoritic Spiritu-

18 19 20 21 22

ality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works , The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York & Mahwah, NJ, 1991). For a modern edition of this text, see Millett and Wogan-Browne, Medieval Prose for Women, pp. 44–85. Charles Crawford, ed. and trans., A Mirror for Simple Souls: The Mystical Work of Marguerite Porete (New York, 1991). Anne Hudson, ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge, 1978). Alexandra Barratt, ed., Women’s Writing in Middle English (London, 1992). Mark Atherton, ed. and trans., Hildegard of Bingen: Selected Writings (Harmondsworth, 2001).

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Julian and Margery Kempe, and concluded its first run very appropriately with a talk by Santha Bhattacharji on Bridget, Julian and Margery’s different styles of visionary discourse. A challenge remained, in the reading to set students. I had always suggested specific chapters in the Cloud and the Scale, and taught Rolle’s English and Latin works, apart from the Meditations, in extract. For this course I reversed the previous emphasis, so that short extracts from male-authored texts – those designed for women, that is – supplemented more extensive study of women mystics. This arrangement seemed to be popular, given the centrality of feminism in most undergraduate courses. Most students enjoyed the course and said so, one finding it invaluable as a link with a History course on medieval women. I changed the methods of assessment, too. Instead of presentations I substituted, as the first assessment, a piece of creative writing, an assignment that several students later told me had led them to select the course. Students were asked to write a self-description, as if by one of the women whose religious faith and practice we were studying on the course. The men on the course accepted the assignment as readily as the women. At the point in the course when this piece was written, we had covered several texts. The organiser of a project run at the College, and called ‘Writing in the Disciplines’, suggested, when approached, that students should write in Middle English as a languagelearning exercise. As several had not taken the introductory course on Middle English, this suggestion proved unfeasible; many did, however, and impressively, imitate the diction and adopt the tone appropriate to their topic. They were most attracted by Ancrene Wisse, Hali Meiðhad and The Wooing of Our Lord, mainly studied in the translation by Savage and Watson. Some students wrote either as a woman accused of heresy, basing themselves on the story of Margaret Porete, or as a cleric or canon lawyer confronting a woman who was so accused, or whom they were investigating because of her visionary experiences. Most wrote, with great élan, about enclosure: as joy, as privacy, as oppression, as temptation or simply as a day-to-day experience. The written work was thoroughly enjoyable to mark. I wish there had been more time for the group to read sample passages from their own work, and fewer inhibitions about doing so, but since nearly thirty took the course, in an inadequately sized room, performing all their work was impossible. I was delighted that students had let their imaginations grapple with the anchoritic experience, with the problems, as they saw them, of solitude and celibacy, and with the idea of searching for God and emulating the sufferings of Jesus. I felt they had enlarged their own perception of life. They had researched their creative writing topics well, and several said they had learned a lot on the course.

The Mystics and the Body One approach I have recently used to help students to feel more confident about relating to the alien medieval, and in some cases the alien Western, world is to focus on the body itself. One of the paradoxes of mystical experience is that, in the pursuit of what lies beyond all physicality, both apophatic and cataphatic

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mystical ways engage very closely with the body, the former to transcend the body’s dominance over mind and soul, the latter to heighten its every perception. Though attitudes to bodily processes have changed, there are constants: what goes into and comes out of a body; how the body is treated by the self and by others; how it may be used and how harmed; how ‘body’ permeates our understanding of place, time and even eternity. Like most twenty-first-century people, students are fascinated by diet, bodily ornament and bodily exertion (sport, clubbing, working out). I used their own physical awareness as a probe to penetrate the different medieval attitudes to this perennially interesting topic. I began the course by drawing attention to any relevant recent news items involving bodies. There was never any shortage: human bodies fascinate, and are adorned and worshipped, at least in the West, as religious icons once were. Items ranged from the serious – statues that were reported as currently weeping, lactating or bleeding – to the frivolous. The Weekend section of The Times for 14 July 2001, for example, carried an article headed ‘Eating out isn’t just a hobby, it’s an obsession’, and another captioned ‘The Worship of Food’, which announced ‘restaurants . . . [as] temples of indulgence, cookery writing [as] the new liturgy and chefs [as] false gods’. From modern veneration of the body clean, fed and enjoying, I invited students to enter the medieval world of dirt and dark, both of them frighteningly unpredictable and coercive, and to begin to develop an appreciation of the concomitant medieval desire for purity. From pleasure we moved to pain, and the strange idea of pain as self-punishment: which, in turn, brought up the concept of punishment for sin. Sin is hard for most students to engage with as an idea: its seven Gregorian divisions (the Seven Deadly Sins) are now seen, almost unproblematically, as virtues. What was once called pride is now self-esteem; wrath has become assertiveness; envy reappears as the aspiration to a consumerist lifestyle; for gluttony, read luxurious living; for lechery, lack of inhibition; for sloth, something like relaxation; for covetousness, the ambition of the upwardly mobile. Once the comparisons had been drawn, students began to speak frankly about what they saw as ‘wrong’ in twenty-first-century lifestyles, and to scrutinise more critically their own cultural conditioning. I began, paradoxically, by considering figures who seem to have transcended bodiliness: with the saints, invoked by the faithful as friends, as helpers against the desperation of illness or injury, at home or in the workplace, against the dangers of war, and, more generally, against the problems of temptation and sin. I did not begin with that startling emblem of the body that medieval Christians saw everywhere: the crucified Christ. I aimed to help students understand the overwhelming fear for the medieval mind of three of the four so-called Last Things (death, judgement, heaven and hell): to show them how hell was seen as a place of total physical, as well as mental, torment. The following quotation, from the fifteenth-century Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God, brings several of these ideas clearly into play, and proved useful as a way of demonstrating how the pressures of the next world impacted on the medieval mind:

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Taak noon hede of hem [þat] seet litel bi parfeccion, as of hem þat sey þei kepe not to be parfit, it suffiseþ to hem to be leest in heuene, or come wiþinne þe yatis of heuene. Þes ben many mennes wordis and þei ben perilous wordis, for y warne þe forsoþe what man haue not parfit loue here, he schal be purget wiþ peines of purgatorie or ellis wiþ dedis of mercy performede for him in þis world, and so be maad parfit or he come into heuene-blisse; for þidur may no man come but he be parfit. [Be] war þerfore of such li
t and foli wordis, and treste more to þin owne goode dedis wil þou art in þis world, þan to þi frendis whan þou art ded. Þenk also þis lif is but schort, þe peynes of purgatorie passeþ alle þe peines of þe world, þe peine of helle Ys euer during, and þe ioye and þe blisse of seintes is euermore lasting. Þenk also ri
t as God is ful of merci and pite, ri
t so he is ri
tful in his domys.23

Pilgrimage, penance and prayer, ways of avoiding this everlasting torment, and, in different ways, fundamentally engaging with bodies and bodiliness, led to Rolle’s Meditations on the Passion , surprisingly popular with students, and, through Rolle’s treatment of Mary, to lyrics to and about the Virgin. Contrasting with her perfect and inviolate body is, of course, the Body of Christ, everywhere visibly present in statues, paintings, stained glass and manuscript illuminations, as in the dramatised performances of biblical history all across the country; present too, literally, in the Eucharist, the sacrament of the altar.24 (The many medieval forms in which this body laid itself open to penetration and absorption by the devout, and triggered mystic rapture, were, of course, actively disapproved of by the Lollard reformers, so that such a figure could be easily accommodated to the earlier structure of Visionaries and Heretics.) In the second half of the course I focused on the ways in which the mystical texts direct readers to consider the soul within but beyond the body. In the Cloud the imagery of human physicality needs to be ‘unsaid’ to arrive at what the author means about contemplation. This is very hard to grasp. I therefore brought in other medieval texts in the tradition of the negative way, particularly extracts from Margaret Porete, to show how challenging is the language of unsaying. I also used the introduction of Michael Sells’ book to frame the discussion.25 From language used to deny self, we moved to the language used to mark and generate the discovery of self, with Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. To my surprise, students enjoyed the numerical schematisation of the first book, especially as they by now understood how its anchorite addressee would live. The beautiful second book of the Scale fell on stonier ground, however, because they were not all aware of the clever use in that book of biblical imagery, especially from The Song of Songs, and were not easily persuaded that the body, and the landscape of love, could be read mystically, in phrases like: ‘The king has brought me into his rooms, taken me into his banquet hall, given me loving 23 Margaret Connolly, ed., Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God, EETS OS 303 (Oxford, 1993),

pp. 24–5. 24 Chs 3 and 4 of Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge,

1991) are especially useful here. 25 M. Sells, Mystical Language of Unsaying (Chicago & London, 1994).

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glances . . . let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth . . . I am sick with love’ (Canticles 1: 3; 2: 4). Because sickness, both physical and mental, frequently precedes visionary illumination, as Richard Lawes’ recent article reminds us,26 I then moved to the wounded body as a locus for, and device to focus, spiritual enlightenment in Julian and Margery, and so concluded the course. Consideration of the interaction of illness and visionary enlightenment in Julian and Margery enabled us to review the ways of expressing mystic transport throughout the course: for example, Rolle’s experiences of spiritual heat, sweetness and light, and the later opening to him of the door of heaven; the ‘ravishing’ of the soul in contemplation as described by the Cloud author and Hilton;27 most movingly, Hilton’s account of the effects of union on body and spirit: it [rapture] maketh the body . . . for to stire and turne heer and theer, as a man that were mad or drunken . . . a soule that is reformed in feelynge by ravyschynge of love into contemplacion of God mai be so feer fro the sensualite and fro the veyn imaginacion and soo feer drawen oute and departid fro the fleischli feelynge for a tyme, that it schal not feelen but good; but that lasteth not alwai.28

The nature of mystic rapture itself may still elude students, but by this stage mine had begun to appreciate that the writers are using every resource to help them, as readers of a very exclusive group of texts, to penetrate inner reality, by demonstrating how flesh is made permeable and violated (ravished) by transcendent truth. Recently I have introduced the course with an article on the religious impulse from New Scientist.29 This article described the measurement of brain activity in the limbic area and noted quiescence in the parietal lobes during contemplative experience. Students adroitly identified the circular reasoning in the article: if the meditating mind turns off sensations from the outside world, how can the meditators signal to researchers when they are meditating? Most students were happy to accept that mystical awareness occurs without worrying too much about how, and readily accepted as a corollary that the questions raised by the study of mysticism are of more than purely historical int erest. Which must be the defence for a course on the Middle English mystics, under whatever name and within whatever frame it is presented. Students from all denominations and religions, and those without much understanding of any religion, were ready to discuss their own response to mystical texts, to the voice(s)

26 Richard Lawes, ‘Psychological Disorder and the Autobiographical Impulse in Julian of Norwich,

Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve’, in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Cardiff & Toronto, 2000), pp. 217–43. 27 For comment on these aspects of the writings of Rolle, the Cloud author and Hilton, see in this volume the contributions of Renevey, Spearing and Bestul. 28 I.30, II.11, Thomas Bestul, ed., Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection , TEAMS (Kalamazoo, 2000), pp. 62, 153. 29 April 2000, pp. 25–8.

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those texts articulate, and to the experiences being presented. Some unexpected interaction with the material enlivened discussion by showing me how the twenty-first-century mindset operates: I was as enlightened about how students understand spiritual issues as they were about medieval ways of being. The most successful courses are those where learning is mutual between teacher and taught: I hope I continue to lear n.

HOLY FICTIONS: ANOTHER APPROACH TO THE MIDDLE ENGLISH MYSTICS

12 Holy Fictions: Another Approach to the Middle English Mystics ROGER ELLIS

I

T

HE module I taught on the Middle English mystics, called ‘Medieval Ways to God’, was usually taken by nine to ten students, a mix of second- and third-year undergraduates who attended ten lectures and ten optional seminars, could write a practice assessment midway through the module, and submitted for their assessment a portfolio essay at the end of the module. The texts, mostly in translation, were The Cloud of Unknowing and the Long Text of the Revelations of Julian of Norwich, now available in the admirable Spearing translations; Margery Kempe, translated by Windeatt; and Ogilvie-Thompson’s edition of Hilton’s Mixed Life. Sometimes, as an alternative to the Cloud, I used Discerning of Spirits from Blake’s anthology of religious prose.1 In the past, though not in the module under discussion, I taught Rolle, using both the English epistles and the Wolters translation of the Incendium Amoris (Fire of Love). Recently I added Wycliffite material, in particular the debate between Archbishop Arundel and the Lollard William Thorpe, rather as R. S. Allen’s contribution to this volume shows her to have done. The Scale I hardly attempted, not only because of the difficulty of checking translations against a Middle English text – though now, thankfully, we have Bestul’s edition to work from – nor simply because of the size of the work, but also because I do not find it the best text to use in an introductory module. Hilton presupposes much greater familiarity with Christian doctrine and understandings than most

1

For editions noted in this paragraph, see: A. C. Spearing, trans., The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (Harmondsworth, 2001); Elizabeth Spearing, trans., Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love: The Short and Long Text (Harmondsworth, 1998); Clifton Wolters, trans., Richard Rolle, The Fire of Love (Harmondsworth, 1971); Barry Windeatt, trans., The Book of Margery Kempe (Harmondsworth, 1985); S. J. Ogilvie-Thompson, ed., Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life Edited from Lambeth Palace MS 472 (Salzburg, 1986); Thomas H. Bestul, ed., Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfec tion, TEAMS (Kalamazoo, 2000); Norman Blake, ed., Middle English Religious Prose (London, 1972); Anne Hudson, ed., Selections from English Wycliffite Writings (Cambridge, 1978) and ed., Two Wycliffite Texts, EETS OS 301 (Oxford, 1993) (the latter for the debate between Thorpe and Arundel).

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students have.2 The other writers appear easier of access: they either present themselves, or can be seen, as appealing directly to personal experience. I also tried to give students a taster of the difference between monastic and mendicant spiritualities, which, in one way or another, informed every text they were going to study. I did this, in part, by supplying the introduction to Sargent’s edition of Love’s Mirror.3 The Mirror has the very considerable bonus, for studies of late-medieval English spirituality, of drawing together most of the threads of any such course. It is the reworking of a text variously dated at the end of the thirteenth century and sometime in the fourteenth century, which was written in Latin by an anonymous Franciscan (the Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi). Translated a hundred or so years later, for a lay audience, by a Carthusian, with the enthusiastic support of Archbishop Arundel, as part of the Church’s response to the spread, from the 1380s, of the Wycliffite heresy, the Mirror hits a number of relevant targets: contrasts between monastic and mendicant spiritualities; challenges to religious authorities of developments in lay spirituality that their predecessors had initiated; the rise of heresy; developments in affective piety. Even Arundel appears in his own right in the module, with a walk-on part in Margery’s text, and a much bigger role in Thorpe’s. But, easy though Love’s Mirror would have been to use, I thought an introductory module on the mystics hardly allowed for more than a nod in its direction. Most recently, as with another module I taught, on the poetry produced within the different Christian traditions since the Reformation, I opted for two approaches, so as to allow for two kinds of essay: one from the small but stable number of students to whom religious understandings were not totally unfamiliar, and who liked to write on the mystics in relation to traditional Christian doctrine; the other, from the majority, who knew little about Christianity, but who were able, from their other literary studies, to bring ideas of gender, or cultural, or other, politics, or of modern critical theory, to bear upon the texts. Both approaches ran the risk of short-changing the complex experiences they were reporting on: but no one can say everything. What follows is the most recent of several attempts I made to introduce the Middle English mystics to my students. Some studies (notably by Minnis)4 have shown that prologues, epilogues, and other instances of editorial and authorial commentary, can provide a major interpretive tool for medieval texts.5 So I looked at the prologue to the Horologium Sapientiae of the German Dominican Henry Suso and attempted to use it, in a translation I produced for the purpose, 2 3 4

5

On this point see further Nicholas Watson, ‘The Middle English Mystics’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), p. 555. Michael Sargent, ed., Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ (New York, 1992). A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 2nd edn (Aldershot, 1988); A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott, with David Wallace, ed. and trans., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1170–c.1375 (Oxford, 1988). See also Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds, The Idea of the Vernacular: an Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Exeter, 1999). This major collection of prologues includes material from the Middle English mystics, though, as its title indicates, its real quarry is not the interpretation of medieval texts so much as vernacularity and the power relations acknowledged or challenged by the production of texts in the vernacular.

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to create a frame for the whole course.6 The Horologium is too large to contemplate offering to students, even in translation, though in what follows I do include material from it. Although I was principally interested in Suso’s prologue for what it has to tell us about the ways in which the Middle English mystics understood their own works – as, in the words of my title, holy fictions – I was also able to explore some of the many other links between Suso and the Middle English mystics: as, indeed, I will be doing in this essay. Of course, the Middle English mystics do sometimes comment on the interpretation of their own works by way of prologues and other instances of paratextual material. Regrettably, this material is not very helpful as an interpretive tool. The Cloud-author, for example, offers a brief prologue to his translation of the Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, in which he acknowledges the importance of Pseudo-Dionysius as an aid to the interpretation of the Cloud, and invokes translation, defined generously to include partnering commentary, as a relevant, and major, model for medieval literary self-understanding.7 In rather different vein, his prologue to the Cloud attempts to restrict the readership of the work to those who wish to be ‘parfite folower[s] of Criste . . . in þe souereinneste point of contemplatife leuing’;8 that apart, it has little to say about the way to read the Cloud, or mystical literature generally, beyond warning readers against a piecemeal and hasty approach, which could prevent them from seeing how matters raised in passing at one point in the text are more fully developed later. A more important point, the relation between heresy and the misreading of a textual metaphor as if it were literally true, energises Cloud chapters 51–68. Just possibly, therefore, the prologue to the Cloud also envisages heresy as a result of the criticised piecemeal approach to the text. Such an understanding certainly figures in the scribal epilogue to the Sloane version of the Long Text of Julian’s work,9 which so identifies heresy, and attempts, consequently, to restrict the circulation of the book to those who intend to be Christ’s lovers. It also, as implied above, informs Love’s Mirror; and it informs MN’s glosses to his translation of Marguerite Porete’s Mirouer des simples âmes (Mirror of simple souls).10 Julian’s scribe also shares her repeatedly expressed understanding that the revelations are based on, and accord with, the text of Holy Scripture.

6

For a modern edition of this work, see P. Künzle, ed., Heinrich Seuses Horologium Sapientiae, Texte zur Geschichte des Kirchlichen Lebens (Freiburg, 1977). I quote from the anonymously edited Colloquia Dominiciana (Munich, 1923), citing this edition by Book and chapter, as well as by page number. 7 Phyllis Hodgson, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and Related Treatises (Exeter, 1982), p. 119. Earlier published as EETS OS 218 (1944) and 231 (1955) (hereafter Hodgson). 8 Ibid., p. 1. 9 Marion Glasscoe, ed., A Revelation of Divine Love, rev. edn (Exeter, 1993), p. 135. 10 M. Doiron, ed., ‘ “The Mirror for Simple Souls”: A Middle English Translation’, Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 5, ed. R. Guarneri (Rome, 1967), p. 256. For further comment on the reading practices recommended by the Cloud-author and Julian’s scribe, which contrast with the ‘devotional reading’ popularised by the Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, see Wogan-Browne, Idea of the Vernacular, pp. 212–15, and E. M. Dutton, ‘Compiling Julian: The Revelation of Love and LateMedieval Devotional Compilations’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis (Oxford, 2002), pp. 31–4, 273–4.

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Important though these understandings are, they do not greatly assist an interpretation of the texts or, more generally, of the mystical project. The two prologues of Margery’s Book are even less useful in this respect. To be sure, they provide an account of the text’s miraculous production by the scribe, and so argue for the sanctity of the author and her text.11 But this is almost a medieval commonplace: it is recorded of Peter of Alvastra, early in his career as chief scribe of St Bridget’s revelations.12 That apart, the two prologues to Margery’s Book do little more than summarise its narrative. (Mystical texts, that is, may not so much develop as repeat themselves.) The prologue to Suso’s Horologium is a very different affair. The Horologium itself dates from 1333–41, the years during which its dedicatee, Hugo de Vaucemain, was Master-General of the order to which Suso belonged – the Dominicans – and most probably from 1334.13 The text reached England by c.1375–8014 and was in circulation by the end of the fourteenth century, when a version was produced in Middle English, the Seven Poyntes, whose reworkings of the original witness to a text lived with over some time.15 This version lacks Suso’s prologue, and substitutes one of the translator’s own making; but, in so doing, the translator gives a clear idea of the circulation of the Horologium in those circles that the mystics were aiming to reach. Moreover, surviving copies of the translation often accompany texts by, or extracts from the writings of, other mystics, including those whom this volume is studying: for example, Love took from it its version of Suso’s prayer to the Sacrament (II.iv). In other words, the prologue to the Horologium, addressing head-on the challenge of producing a visionary text, provides a nearly contemporary witness, and one that the later Middle English mystics will surely have known, to the problems of interpreting mystical writing. There is more. Offered as a series of revelations and prayers, the Horologium is couched in characteristic medieval dialogue form, where a disciple figure, a surrogate for Suso and his readers, is given instruction by authoritative figures, most notably heavenly Wisdom. This has two consequences for us. First, the Horologium’s mix of dialogue and revelations provides a useful index of the formal range of Middle English mystical writing, which can be divided into the different literatures of instruction and visionary experience. Walter Hilton and the Cloud-author choose epistolary form, and thus appear to privilege religious instruction over the immediacy of religious experience; Margery Kempe and

11 See Barry Windeatt, ed., The Book of Margery Kempe (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge, 2004), p. 50,

n. to 148. 12 Carl-Gustaf Undhagen, ed., Sancta Birgitta Revelaciones Book I, Samlingar Utvigna av Svenska

Fornskriftsällskapet, Serie 2, Latinska Skrifter VII: 1 (Uppsala, 1978), p. 239. From the wealth of continental material available for comparative purposes, I mainly restrict myself, apart from Suso, to St Bridget of Sweden, who can be argued to have earned her place in such a study because of the enthusiastic support given to her by Margery Kempe. I hope readers will forgive me this eccentric expression of interest. 13 Künzle, Horologium, pp. 19, 22, 27. 14 Roger Lovatt, ‘Henry Suso and the Mystical Tradition in England’, in Medieval Mystical Tradition in England II, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1982), p. 50. 15 See Roger Ellis, ‘The Choices of the Translator in the Late Middle English Period 1982’, in Glasscoe (1982), pp. 18–28 passim, and Lovatt, pp. 47–75.

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Julian of Norwich, whatever the religious instruction they derive from their religious experience, are, first and foremost, writing to record that religious experience. The second consequence is the polar opposite of the first, and much more radical. The fact that the Horologium oscillates between two kinds of writing makes any distinction between them very difficult to sustain. Suso acknowledges as much, as we shall see, in his prologue. This makes the prologue amazingly pertinent to the study of the Middle English mystics, since their works, too, regularly transgress formal (and other) limits: think of the ways, for example, as Renevey notes in his contribution to this volume, in which ‘almost each of his [Rolle’s] pieces defies the genre in which it has been couched’, moving effortlessly from accounts of first-person experience to prayers to God to homiletic address to his reader; think of the ways in which Margery Kempe juxtaposes a historical narrative with prayers and revelations, most of which have no easily recoverable connection to the events of her own life.

II Suso’s prologue begins with a contrast between the spirituality of the early Church and that of his own time: a contrast that particularly energises Horologium I.v and II.i. Ironically, the now in which Suso, like the Middle English mystics after him, feels compelled to communicate a divine message that he has been singled out to receive, is a now in which, so to say, the proliferation of knowledge about God goes hand-in-hand with a deep ignorance of what it means to experience God. In this respect Suso can be fruitfully compared with the Middle English mystics, who have been characterised as distrustful of abstract speculation: the point is especially relevant to Rolle and the Cloud-author.16 Knowledge about God reminds one of the contemporary university context of theological enquiry, of which Suso, as a Dominican, had first-hand knowledge. Knowledge about God is not the same thing as knowing God. According to Suso, to know God truly, as the Fathers of the early Church did, one must seek him with a simple heart and experience him in goodness (‘sentite de domino’ (feel/sense/learn concerning him)), in fervour of spirit (‘spiritu ferventes’), and in divine illumination of the mind (‘mentes . . . suo lumine illustravit’ (he enlightened their souls with his light)), so that the truly wise attend to, and in-tend – have their intention set upon – only the wisdom of God (pp. 7–8). Biblical metaphors of fire and light, and the language of sensation, especially of taste, are central to Suso’s articulation of this position. The contrast with Suso’s own time is striking. Few of his contemporaries are studying to acquire that devotion – the word ‘study’ is like a leitmotiv in the prologue, unsurprising given Suso’s Dominican context – which will warm their

16 Jean Leclercq, François Vandenbroucke and L. Bouyer, Histoire de la Spiritualité Chrétienne. II Le

Moyen Age (Paris, 1961), p. 498 (‘l’école anglais’).

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hearts with a new grace and bring them a rain of holy tears; few seek the grace of divine visitation and communication: pauci inveniantur qui devocioni studeant, qui novam graciam se calefacientem querant, qui ymbre lacrimarum . . . se crebrius perfundi gaudeant, qui visitacionis divine et allocucionis superne graciam querant. (p. 8)17 (few may be found who study at devotion, who seek a new grace making them warm, who rejoice to be frequently soaked through in a rain of tears, who seek the grace of a divine visitation and conversation from above)

On the contrary, their learning is put to the service of vanity. Suso shares tellingly with the Cloud-author’s Book of Privy Counselling the key biblical text ‘scientia inflat, caritas edificat’ (knowledge puffs up, charity builds up).18 A depressing feature of these moderni is their desire to be thought wiser than, and their determination to transgress the bounds set by, their fathers (‘ultra terminos quos posuerunt patres eorum’, I.v, p. 88 (beyond the limits which their fathers set)).19 They may be more obsessed by ‘vicia . . . arcium sermocinalium’ than by ‘vicia animorum’ (p. 9) (vices of preaching arts . . . vices of souls). They put readers off by parading authorities for every point they make.20 Or ‘adinvenciones topicas vel proposiciones dubias secuntur tanquam demonstraciones certas’ (p. 18) (they advance their topical fictions and uncertain propositions as certain demonstrations of truth). Like the readers criticised in the prologue of the Cloud and the epilogue to Julian’s Long Text, they are in danger of reading the Horologium selectively and in haste (‘raptim nunc hoc, nunc illud’, p. 13 (hastily, now this portion, now that)), an approach that will leave them guessing at the meaning of the text (‘quasi coniecturando nitatur degustare’, p. 13 (as if by guessing he tries to taste the work). We might compare MN’s desire that readers of his translation of Marguerite Porete should not ‘deme . . . to soone’, but read the text ‘bi good avisement’ twice or three times over.21

17 The relevance of this material to the Middle English mystics hardly needs stressing: with Suso’s

18 19

20 21

‘graciam . . . calefacientem’ (grace making warm), literalised in his own narrative (Horologium I.i, p. 40); compare the experience of the fire of love, noted positively by Rolle (Prologue, Incendium, Wolters), Margery Kempe, ch. 35 (Windeatt, 2000), p. 193 and n. to 2894) and (generally) negatively by Walter Hilton and the Cloud-author (e.g., Scale I.10–11, 26, John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, trans., Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection , Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1991), pp. 83–4, 98, Cloud, ch. 45 and Privy Counselling (Hodgson, pp. 47, 96). On tears (‘ymbre lacrimarum’), also noted Horologium I.iii (pp. 60–1), compare Margery Kempe, ch. 28 (Windeatt, 2000), p. 163 and n. to 2217). On revelation and divine communication (‘visitacionis divine et allocucionis superne’), compare, obviously, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. 1 Corinthians 8: 1, cf. Horologium I.xiv, p. 270, Hodgson, p. 98. The Latin phrase is probably a commonplace: it reappears in the context of the debate on Bible translation at Oxford in 1401 (Roger Ellis and Liz Oakley-Brown, eds, Translation and Nation: Towards a Cultural Politics of Englishness (Clevedon, 2001), p. 29). Cf. ‘non fuit opus ad singula queque auctoritates adducere’, p. 10 (it was not my task to adduce authorities for every point I made) and Cloud, ch. 70 (Hodgson, p. 70). Doiron, ‘ “The Mirror” ’, p. 256.

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Nor is the logic-chopping of Suso’s academic colleagues the only ground for concern. The fervour of the devout can provoke an envious response among the worldly. To such observers, what the faithful have experienced in their life as the working of the divine, and sought to embody in their writings, is no more than ‘supersticiosa figmenta’ (p. 18) (figments of superstition); holy revelations are retitled ‘fantasticas decepciones’ (p. 18) (fantastical deceptions), and the deeds of the holy fathers ‘narratorium fabulosum’ (p. 18) (a narrative of fables).22 This opposition differs in degree, but not in kind, from the academics’ failure to experience the spiritual gifts they are so energetically dissecting. Of course, Suso is well aware, and his prologue tacitly acknowledges, that the advancing of claims about religious experience has always divided the hearers, and that disbelief may not always be caused by ignorance or ill-will. Contemporary with the Middle English mystics, for example, is a major debate about the revelations of St Bridget of Sweden (1303–73), focused in one work, produced in their defence, the Epistola solitarii of Alphonse of Jaen (see further n. 22 above), and in works opposing them, in 1415 and 1423–4, by the French theologian Jean Gerson.23 Closer to home, we could note the candid way in which, however much it tries to foreclose discussion about her sanctity, Margery’s Book is compelled to present witnesses for and against her claims. (Of course, those who support Margery get the better, fuller and theologically more accomplished arguments. Those who oppose her resort to verbal abuse, or show in other ways that they have missed the point. Which is to say that, here as elsewhere, character in revelations-literature serves explicitly religious ends, a point to which I shall return later.) Again, we could note the way in which the visionary regularly misses the point of a vision. Alphonse tells us of St Bridget, for example, that sometimes she could not interpret her visions, and did not know whether the obscure 22 With these criticisms, cf. Cloud, ch. 18 (Hodgson, p. 27), and its analogue, in ch. 1 of Epistola

solitarii, produced in 1375–6 in defence of the revelations of St Bridget of Sweden by her editor-in-chief, Alphonse of Jaen: ‘proferunt in medium exempla aliquarum personarum spiritualium, que preteritis temporibus in suis visionibus a dyabolo deluse fuerunt, immemores tamen illorum, qui per diuinas visiones . . . a Deo illuminati fuerunt’ (Arne Jönsson, Alfonso of Jaén: His Life and Works (Lund, 1989), p. 120) (and bringis foorth exsamplis of odyr spiritual personys the whech in tymis past was deludid of the deule in þer visions not thinking on them þat where illumynid of god be visiouns (ME translation, Rosalynn Voaden, ‘The Middle English Epistola Solitarii of Alfonso of Jaen: An Edition of the Text in British Library MS. Cotton Julius F II’, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, ed. James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 35: 15 (Salzburg, 1993), p. 151). 23 For the relevant works of Alphonse and Gerson, see Jönsson, Alfonso, or Hans Aili, ed., Sancta Birgitta Revelaciones Book VIII, Samlingar Utgivna av Svenska Fornskriftsällskapet, Serie 2, Bd VII: 8 (Uppsala, 2002), and P. Glorieux, ed., Jean Gerson: Oeuvres Complètes , IX (Paris, 1973), pp. 177–85 respectively. For comment, see Eric Colledge, ‘Epistola solitarii ad reges: Alphonse of Pecha as Organiser of Birgittine and Urbanist Propaganda’, Medieval Studies 18 (1956), pp. 19–49; Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge, eds, The Chastising of God’s Children (Oxford, 1957), index (svv Alphonse of Pecha); André Vauchez, ‘La diffusion des “Révélations” de sainte Brigitte de Suède dans l’espace français à la fin du Moyen Age’, in Santa Brigida dei Tempi Nuovi, Proceedings of the International Study Meeting Rome 3–7 October 1991 (Rome, 1993), pp. 151–63; Rosalynn Voaden, ‘Women’s Words, Men’s Language: Discretio Spirituum as Discourse in the Writing of Medieval Women Visionaries’, The Medieval Translator, 5, ed. Roger Ellis and René Tixier (Turnhout, 1996), pp. 64–83 and God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Visionaries (Woodbridge, 1999); Claire L. Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy (Woodbridge, 2001).

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prophecies she was sometimes given were to be understood ‘textualiter an figuraliter vel an spiritualiter’, Epistola IV.36 (literally or figuratively or spiritually).24 In such cases, the visionary must appeal to religious authority to interpret and validate the experience. That said, while self-criticism, and appeal to religious authority, appear regularly as elements of visionary writing, in the cases of St Bridget and Margery Kempe they figure chiefly as formal devices to validate the text.25 Self-criticism works to very different ends, as a major structuring principle, in Julian’s work. Also relevant in this connection is the writer’s regular profession of inability adequately to represent her or his experiences in writing. Yet it is the casual or ill-informed reader who is more likely to miss the point, and Suso has no confidence in the ability of most of his contemporaries to read his work properly. The ideal reader of his work must have an interest in, and experience of, spiritual matters equal to Suso’s. Such a person, the prologue tells us, is the current Master-General of the Order, the book’s dedicatee and first reader, a man well able to meet the logic-choppers on their own ground. More importantly, he is a person endowed with spiritual gifts and the light of divine wisdom, and has written numerous works that seek to develop in the readers, lay as well as religious, conformity to Christ and the perfection of virtue: that same goal that Suso’s work has set itself.26 Such a person, by virtue of his taste of spiritual matters, will be able to read Suso’s work properly, and to prove, or test, it in the light of his own anointing by the Holy Spirit. He can improve the text as necessary by cutting or adding to it (pp. 13–14). This ideal reader almost has the force of a trope in medieval texts, where (usually) he is accorded the same powers as de Vaucemain here receives. The trope was brought to life, literally, in fifteenth-century England in the aftermath of the draconian constitutions issued by Arundel that prohibited unlicensed Bible translations.27As with this first reader, so with every ideal reader or hearer of Suso’s work. As a reward for reading with sincere attention, the reader is promised ‘haustum alicuius devocionis’ (pp. 12–13) (a draught of a certain devotion) or some other new grace conferred by God. Suso can rely on God, like the first reader of the text, to make good the defects of the work in the hearts of these pious readers (p. 12). Unlike the logic-choppers, such readers will attend with studious care to the whole work -‘totum istud studiose cure[n]t perlegere’, p. 13 24 Jönsson, Alfonso, p. 140. This detail may inform Margery’s own account, near the end of Book I, of

the ways in which she received and understood her visions (ch. 89, Windeatt (2000), p. 384). 25 On this point, see further Roger Ellis, ‘Margery Kempe’s Scribe and the Miraculous Books’, in

Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition, ed. Helen Phillips (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 161–75; Voaden ‘Women’s Words’, and Voaden, ed., Prophets Abroad: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (Woodbridge, 1996). 26 ‘Divina sapiencia . . . in presenti opere intendit principaliter non quidem informare nescientes . . . sed reaccendere extinctos, frigidos inflammare, movere tepidos, indevotos ad devocionem provocare, ac sompno negligencie torpentes ad virtutum vigilanciam excitare’ (pp. 8–9) (divine wisdom in the present work intends principally not only to inform the religiously ignorant . . . but to rekindle those whose fire has gone out, to inflame the cold, to move the lukewarm, to provoke the undevout to devotion and to arouse those benumbed in the sleep of carelessness to vigilant exercise of virtues). 27 See Nicholas Watson, ‘Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum 70 (1995), pp. 822–64.

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(let them read the whole work through carefully)). They will need to keep their wits about them when reading it – ‘licet in predictis diligens cautela sit adhibenda, non tamen spernenda sunt usquequaque’ (p. 18) (although in the foresaid things diligent care needs to be shown, they are not all, nevertheless, to be rejected) – and be prepared to study it carefully to discover the secret mysteries hidden beneath its figurative speech – ‘huius figurate locucionis occulta misteria diligens lector faciliter poterit advertere’, p. 12 (the careful reader will easily discover the secret mysteries of this figurative speech). Suso’s juxtaposing of ideal and other, first and later, readers of his text has ready parallels in the writing of the Middle English mystics. We might compare, for example, the opening paragraph of Privy Counselling, addressed very specifically to a single unnamed individual on the grounds that a text written for a wider audience cannot get so immediately to the point.28 Or we might note the ways in which the mystics’ reissuings or reworkings of their texts covertly or overtly address different audiences from those of the earlier versions (the two Books of Hilton’s Scale, Julian’s Short and Long Texts).29 Equally relevant to the study of the Middle English mystics is Suso’s understanding of his own ambiguous place as author of the text. Characteristically, a mystical text seeks to obliterate that sense of distance between God and the reader, which prompted the writing of the text, by making the visionary as transparent a medium for the divine message as possible. The simplicity of the visionary’s devotion and its written articulation will then replicate, symbolise, and, as necessary, inspire and challenge the devotion of the readers. In such a literary model, where each stage in the transmission of the divine message appears as a mirror image or echo of the previous one, the writer becomes entirely secondary to the message being transmitted. Suso, that is, presents himself in the prologue not so much as author of his work, whether he writes or dictates it, but more as one through whom the divine author writes, one enduring the divine initiative (‘non . . . videbatur ibidem habere modum agentis vel dictantis, sed modum quendam divina pacientis’, pp. 16–17 (he seemed not to have the manner of one writing or dictating, but a certain manner of one suffering divine things)). Special revelations told Suso not only when to write but also what to write:30 almost everything he writes had just such a source. Consequently, if at any time he wrote on his own authority (‘quasi ex se’ (as if from himself)), or functioned like a medieval compiler and collected material from elsewhere to excerpt and add to his writing, the taste was insipid (p. 17). St Bridget’s Liber offers a distinctive variation on this commonplace: some of its revelations (e.g., IV.45, VII.18), when their divine source is not to be made immediately apparent, are to be delivered by the visionary as if in her own voice (‘a seipsa’, ‘non ex parte Christi’ (from herself, not on the part of Christ)). By 28 Hodgson, p. 75. 29 For comment on this feature of the Scale, see Bestul’s contribution to this volume; and for comment

on the different audiences envisaged by Julian’s two texts, Nicholas Watson, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum 68 (1993), pp. 637–83. 30 ‘Special’ revelations is Künzle’s preferred reading; the Colloquia offers, Horologium, p. 17, the variant ‘spiritual’.

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contrast, Liber VIII.12 and 51 show Christ directing her to transmit the message as coming directly from him, ‘ex parte mea’ (in my voice).31 One proof of the divine inspiration of Suso’s text is that same one which the scribe of Julian’s Long Text urged of Julian’s writing: its conformity with patristic and biblical materials. Suso therefore is able to describe his revelations as ‘veritates quidem patrum . . . secundum sacre scripture sensum prout accepi a Domino’ (p. 9) (the truths of the Fathers . . . according to the sense of Holy Scripture, as I have received from the Lord). Hence in Horologium I.i the Bible texts that set the young disciple on his spiritual journey are heard with the force of a literal revelation. The model used by Suso to explain this conformity is telling: it is that of translation. The new revelation is, so to say, a faithful translation, sometimes of both the words and the sense, sometimes simply of the sense, of sacred, and especially biblical, texts (‘idem in sensu, aut eciam idem in verbis et sensu, vel certe simile’, p. 17 (the same sense, or the same words and sense or certainly similar)). The visionary, then, is a fidus interpres (faithful interpreter), and, like the translator, will transmit without interference a divine message delivered and transcribed now as plainly as when first it was given to the Fathers.32 If the mystical text exists as a new thing in its own right, it also presents itself as the reworking of existing texts, which can be used to prove its truth. Another proof of divine inspiration strikingly links Suso with Margery Kempe. It is the miracles that accompanied the production of the text. Once Suso had begun to work on his text, a change for the worse in his personal circumstances made him think, as Margery’s scribe did, of abandoning the task. And then a vision reanimated his flagging purpose and led him to finish it (p. 16). Then, once the work was completed, Suso was planning, like Margery herself,33 to keep it secret for fear of provoking that criticism which the Prologue is still seeking to forestall.34 Once again, divine Wisdom intervened directly to show, by further signs and revelations, that he must publish the text (p. 18). Publication of the text therefore proves both its human author’s humility and its own divine inspiration. It follows that we need to know only as much of the writer’s background and personality as will enable us to enter the world of vision and divine colloquy that he is presenting. Most obviously, Suso tells us very little in the Horologium about himself, and that little in highly stylised form. A similar reticence charac31 For a parallel phrase, de suo (of his own), used negatively to define the activity of the medieval

compiler, see Minnis, Medieval Theory, p. 102. I take the terms ‘scribe’, ‘compiler’and ‘author’, which I use throughout this essay, from the account of literary activity by St Bonaventura (Minnis, Medieval Theory, p. 94). 32 For the extensive modern literature on medieval translation, see bibliographies to Ellis and Tixier, The Medieval Translator (1996, 1998), Ellis and Oakley-Brown, Translation and Nation. On prologues to medieval translations of sacred texts, featuring the distinction here noted between word-for-word and sense-for-sense translation and making approving use of the trope of the faithful translator, see especially Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge, 1991). 33 Proem, Windeatt (2000), p. 46. 34 Such observations almost have the force of a commonplace (see, for example, MN’s version of Porete’s Mirouer (Doiron ‘ “The Mirror” ’, pp. 249–50)); they appear most strikingly in the Cloud-author’s attempt, noted above, to restrict the circulation of his work.

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terises Julian, and, though they are not directly recording visionary experiences, Walter Hilton and the Cloud-author. In the prologue, similarly, Suso describes the genesis of his work only in the context of quasi-liturgical acts in which he was engaged when he first received ‘centum meditaciones seu consideraciones sue passionis’ (p. 15) (one hundred meditations or considerations of his [i.e. Christ’s] Passion).35 Many of the revelations of Margery Kempe have similar origins in the liturgy. For Suso, that is, as for all the Middle English mystics, even the Cloud-author, the ordinary life of faith is the soil from which mystical experience grows, a point well urged in Edden’s contribution to this volume.36 And that life of faith is focused most clearly in the subject of Suso’s ‘meditaciones seu consideraciones’, the humanity of the crucified Christ, which, he tells us, ‘indoctum quemque reddit doctissimum, et inperitos ac ydiotas facit proficere in Magistros’ (Horologium I.xiv, p. 270) (makes each unlearned man most learned, and ignorant idiots progress into masters). Suso shares with all the English mystics (e.g., Hilton, Scale I.93, Cloud, chapter 7) a sense of the need to come to the heights of contemplation through devotion to the humanity of Christ. As he says in Horologium I.ii, restat ut per assumptam humanitatem et humanitatis passionem, tamquam per viam regiam gradatim ascendere at alciora discas (p. 43) (so it remains that through the humanity taken on by God and the passion he suffered as a man, as by a royal way, you may gradually learn to ascend to higher things)

Book I of the Horologium contains numerous references to, and revelations about, the Passion, especially I.ii–iv, xiv–xvi. Like Julian’s revelations about the Passion (1, 2, 4, 8–9), these are presented so as to provide a more or less coherent narrative. And, like Julian’s revelations, they are interspersed with revelations on other subjects. Hence, the table of contents for Book I tells us: materia primi huius libri est Cristi passio preciosissima . . . et qualiter . . . discipulus in suis actibus se eidem debet conformare. Hiis interseruntur quedam materie communes et motive ad propositum pertinentes. (p. 19) (The matter of this first book is the most precious passion of Christ . . . and how the disciple in his acts must conform himself to the same. Amongst this material are inserted certain common and moving matters pertinent to our proposed subject matter.)37

Suso’s use of the earlier-noted terms ‘consideracio’ and ‘meditacio’ in the prologue has further relevance for the study of the Middle English mystics. The

35 These quasi-liturgical acts are probably what later became known as the Stations of the Cross. 36 See also Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London, 1993). 37 For a slightly less sanguine view of the unity of Book I, see Horologium I.xiv: ‘redeamus . . . ad hanc

utilitatem precipuam, de qua tantam digressionem fecimus’ (p. 280) (let us return to this most outstandingly useful material [i.e. the Passion], from which we have made such a long digression).

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first term points to the very visual character of much medieval meditative writing. The second, appearing in a context of interior divine illumination (‘eius mentalibus oculis . . . ostenduntur’, p. 17 (to his inner eyes . . . they were shown)), witnesses to a blurring of the boundaries between what we might think of as the lower reaches of spirituality, when the person seems to be active in the production of the religious image (i.e. meditation), and the higher, where the image appears to be generated independently of the conscious mind (i.e. contemplation/mysticism). How relevant such considerations are to the visionary writings of Julian and Margery should need no stressing. Margery’s terminology for contemplative prayer, in particular, is flexible enough to include meditation, and does not readily distinguish between words divinely given to her and prayers that she makes herself. For her the key seems to be the mental quality of the prayer, whatever its formal origin, a point also urged in Bhattacharji’s contribution to this volume. The meditations Suso received, to be recited each day with accompanying genuflections and prayers, are a device to lead the disciple, as far as possible, to conform himself through them to the crucified Christ. Omitted for the sake of brevity from the Horologium (p. 16), they are nevertheless its immediate cause, since their recitation leads to further spiritual illuminations contained in the Horologium (‘diversas eo modo prout in sequentibus apparebit illuminaciones’, p. 16) (diverse illuminations in that manner as will appear in the following pages). Here I see clear parallels with all of the Middle English mystics, but especially with Julian of Norwich, who understood her life, after the climactic revelation-events of May 1373, as dependent on, and constantly informed by, them, and who realised her positive sense of the relation of revelation to the total life of faith (as I put it in 1980) in the production of her Long Text.38 The preliminary draft of Suso’s revelations, if we may so call the meditations about which his prologue speaks to us, has a further significance for us. He first produced a version of them in German for ‘devotis personis, doctis et indoctis’ (p. 369) (devout persons, both educated and uneducated). Clearly, Suso does not find use of the vernacular the problem that English writers often do.39 This reminds us, as critics have recently urged, that the move from Latin to the vernacular is not simply to be explained as the dumbing-down of complex clerical understandings for ignorant secular readers. 40 Indeed, the Horologium itself establishes, in a telling contrast between the ‘simplices illiterati indocti’ (simple unlettered and uninstructed) and the author’s intellectual compeers, that the formers’ devotion to the Passion of Christ gives them a greater understanding than that enjoyed by those who spend their time ‘subtilia texentes’ (I.vi, p. 138) (weaving subtle arguments). Such an insight informs Hilton’s Scale I.4–5, which reserves the first and lowest stage of contemplation for purely intellectual understanding, and opens the second, 38 Roger Ellis, ‘Revelation and the Life of Faith: The Vision of Julian of Norwich’, Christian 6 (1980),

61–71. 39 See Watson, ‘Censorship’. 40 On this point, see many of the essays in David Wallace, ed., The Cambridge History of Medieval

English Literature (Cambridge, 1999). The move from the vernacular to Latin, of course, is a necessary condition for securing a work’s wider circulation.

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higher, stage of contemplation, what we might call the way of devotion, to the simple and unlearned. (It is a sad index of the deteriorating religious situation in England in the early years of the fifteenth century that, within a generation of Hilton’s work, Love’s Mirror was restoring a religious status quo which the activities of the Lollards appeared to have threatened, and returning the laity to their familiar place at the bottom of the spiritual pile: recipients of ‘mylke of ly
te doctryne and not . . . sadde (profound) mete of grete clargye (learning) and hy contemplacion’.41

III Suso’s prologue, then, engages in a holy exercise of having-it-both-ways: simultaneously addressing ideal and actual readers; asserting the newness of a work which, since it was divinely inspired, needs no external validation, but which, all the same, is proved true by its conformity with existing texts; using the very considerable resources of scholasticism even as it critiques their use by contemporaries. Such observations are immediately and obviously relevant to the study of the Middle English mystics. But the prologue has another major area of interest, which takes us to the very heart of the mystical project: quite simply, the status of revelation-literature as a form of holy fiction. Suso’s self-presentation as humble scribe of a divinely authored word is radically complicated by his need to assume the mantle of authorship. We have heard him tell us in the prologue (p. 17) that he refused to add material from other sources on his own authority because the join always showed, and because of the gross overuse of ancient authorities by modern writers to provide footnotes for their texts. A few lines later we find him writing that he examined his material carefully (‘rimatus est’, which can also mean ‘rooted or dug around’) to ensure that nothing should appear in it that might contradict the words of the Fathers, so that their words might prop up (‘fulciretur’) his own (p. 17). These submerged horticultural metaphors give the writer a more active role in the reception and production of his text than is revealed by the earlier-noted metaphors of light and fire. Willy-nilly, the humble translator-scribe is forced to assume the more complicated and ambitious role of compiler-author (to say nothing of the role of editor of a divine word). Strikingly, it is not as the transparent medium for the expression of divine truths, but as the author of a fiction – admittedly, a holy one – that Suso presents himself most memorably in the prologue. In so doing he seeks to defend his work against its earlier-noted dismissal by the envious as no better than a fiction. He does this by invoking biblical authority for the use of fiction.42 The Bible, he notes, includes fictions told by one historical person to another, none literally true in the way that the framing narrative is true, all of them instances 41 Sargent, Nicholas Love’s Mirror, p. 10. 42 On parallel appeals to scriptural practice to authorise study of ‘the fables of the poets’, see Minnis,

Medieval Theory, Index sv. parable, and esp. pp. 131, 142–4. Minnis refers this understanding in part to the pressures of teaching and preaching (pp. 131, 137): pressures to which Suso, as a Dominican, will have been keenly responsive.

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of ‘figurate locucionis’ (p. 12) (figurative speech), and all true according to what they signified. He offers several examples to prove his point (pp. 11–12). Two of the Old Testament examples concern King David, author of many of the Psalms, which, Suso might have noted, provide a clear defence of a literature put to holy uses.43 In the first example, Nathan the prophet tells a story that will make the King see the consequences of his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband Uriah (2 Samuel 12). In the second, similarly, a widow from Tekoa tells the King a story that will make him see the need to pardon his son Absolom (2 Samuel 14). Suso also shows how, in the context of a dispute among the Christians of Corinth about the relative importance of Paul and Apollos in their conversion, St Paul imitates the voices of his disciples (1 Corinthians 3: 4, 4: 6), and puts words into their mouths. In the most literal sense of the word, therefore, St Paul is creating a simplified fictional version of an actual debate: as he later admits, he is by this means making himself a figure, or, in his word for it, transfiguring himself (‘transfiguravi’, p. 12), so that his hearers can more easily read their own situation in his fiction. Consequently, the Horologium does not have to be simply accepted as truth or rejected outright as fiction. Although, Suso insists, many of the things he reports literally happened, they do not all need to be so accepted, because they operate as metaphors – ‘non sunt omnes accipiende secundum litteram, licet multe ad litteram contigerint, sed est figurata locucio’, p. 11 (they are not all to be accepted to the letter, though many happened exactly as written, but it is a figure of speech). Suso has included them, like the parables to King David and the use of invented speech by St Paul, as rhetorical figures designed to produce a specific response in the hearers. Their objective truth is not their main point. In a similar way, though the world of the senses offers only a partial and limited witness to the world of the spirit, it is not to be dismissed outright, as the Cloud-author seems to wish. Erotic love, in particular, can provide a pointer to love of God: functions, at its best, as a metaphor of that love, and as a first step towards it. It is entirely in keeping with this understanding that the Horologium regularly quotes – admittedly, only in Book I, what one might call the beginners’ slopes of the work – from Ovid, that arch-poet of erotic love.44 Suso’s use of erotic metaphor has obvious connections with the writings of Rolle; his implied defence of metaphor in spiritual writing can help to focus some of the Cloud-author’s very distinctive practices, as noted in Spearing’s contribution to this volume. Moreover, the truth of Suso’s narrative does not require a belief in a literal disciple who was the sole recipient of the divine communication, ‘qui sapienciam solus pre ceteris tantum amaverit’ (one who loved God more than anyone else); the words of the narrative are to be read as addressed directly to each person, whatever her/his stage in the spiritual life (p. 10).45 Julian makes a 43 See Minnis, Medieval Theory, and Michael Kuczynski, Prophetic Song: The Psalms in Late Medieval

England (Philadelphia, 1995). 44 The quotations occur in I.i, vi, viii. For further details, see Künzle, Horologium. 45 So I read the words ‘quolibet in genere’ in the phrase ‘revera pro quolibet in genere dictum habeatur’

(p. 10) (in truth, it must be taken as said for each in his degree).

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very similar point: ‘in as much as ye love God the better it [the revelation] is more to you than to me’ (chapter 9).46 Character, that is, is not necessarily ‘real’, and certainly need not be single, any more than vision itself is. Rather, it is a rhetorical construct and an instance of sound pedagogic practice. St Bridget’s Liber similarly acknowledges the rhetorically constructed quality of characters in several of her revelations; she notes, for example, that the single character addressed by God in one revelation represents the whole people of Cyprus (VII.19). The dazzling and dizzying range of characters to whom Marguerite Porete gives speech in her Mirouer makes the same point more dramatically. Hence, Suso tells us (pp. 10–11), the teacher, acting like St Paul in the earlier-noted quotation, will impersonate now a saint, now a sinner; now a person who loves Christ with real feeling (‘affectuose’) and betrothes himself to Christ by faith and love, now a sinner who prays tearfully for forgiveness. The main biblical models here, though not so named by Suso, are the Psalter and the other Sapiential books of the Old Testament. Parallels exist between Suso’s comments and those made in commentaries on the Psalter – in the Glossa Ordinaria and by Gilbert of Poitiers, or by Rolle in the prologue to his own translation of the Psalms – as also in comments on Ecclesiastes by St Bonaventura.47 So, too, the dialogue form followed, which usually involves the disciple in questions and Wisdom in replies, ‘solum posita est ad fervenciorem modum tradendi’ (p. 10) (exists only as a more fervent way of communicating (sc. religious truths)). That word ‘fervenciorem’, as a marker of Suso’s style (he speaks of his style as ‘fervida locucio’, p. 9 (fervid speech)), is worth lingering over. With its cognates, it is used throughout the prologue, most obviously to describe the religious state Suso hopes his work will generate in its readers. The style is no more single, however, than were the characters. It will match the subject matter precisely (‘et sic diversimode stilum vertit secundum quod tunc materie congruit’, p. 11 (and so he changes the style according to what fits the matter)): probably we should look for the source of this comment in commentaries on the Psalms, discussing the different styles adopted throughout the Psalter.48 A simple and unlettered, even a barbarous, style (‘sermo inperitus et incultus . . . barbarum aliquid’, p. 9) (unskilled and uncultivated speech . . . something barbarous) may better help to focus the reader’s attention on the divine message. Probably the best texts to compare with Suso in respect of this question of style, since they directly address the same question more than once, are those of the Cloud-author, who promises to make ‘a symple and a li
t lesson of a lewid man’, which ‘þe lewdist kow’ can immediately grasp,49 and who prefers the homeliest imagery as a way of getting his points across. Even style, then, inhabits the same hinterland, between passive and active exercises of scribal and authorial functions, which characterises Suso’s other expressions of literary

46 47 48 49

Glasscoe, Revelation, p. 10. Minnis, Medieval Theory, pp. 45, 52, 111, 191. For example Aquinas, quoted in Minnis, Medieval Theory, p. 91. Privy Counselling, Hodgson, p. 76.

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purpose. The human author, that is, is centrally implicated in the production of divine meanings (subject matter) and effects (style). Centrally related to the business of dialogue is the question of voicing: voicing in, and the voice(s) of, revelations-texts. This point was not directly made in the prologue, but is too important to overlook. An excellent example of what I mean comes in Horologium I.xvi. This chapter describes the role of the Virgin Mary in the Passion. Initially the chapter is written as a third-person narrative. Soon after it starts, however, it adopts the mode of direct, second-person, address (prayer) to the Virgin. And then, midway through the chapter, Suso allows the Virgin to tell the story in her own words, from her own limited perspective on events. The Virgin’s speech starts unambiguously as Suso’s creation of a speech that she might have made: (‘referat ergo nobis mater. . . . procedat nunc in medium, et taliter nobis respondeat . . . et dicat’, p. 312 (let the Mother therefore tell us. . . . let her now come centre stage, and reply to us . . . and say)). We rapidly lose sight of this fact; as the speech develops, it is not Suso’s voice that we hear speaking, but Mary’s. Strikingly, Suso interrupts the Virgin three times, once, indeed, in mid-sentence, and returns us briefly to the third-person narrative form that he used for his opening paragraphs. In the first of these interventions, he declares that the Virgin’s speech thus far has been a partial account of her words (‘hec et similia verba tristia mater mestissima prosequitur’, p. 315 (the saddest mother speaks these and similar sad words)). She herself had previously applied that same phrase ‘hec et similia’ to her own words (p. 314). Yet, at the end of the speech, Suso returns to his own voice with the medieval equivalent of quotation marks (‘huc usque virginis verba’, p. 317 (thus far the Virgin has been speaking)), as if the whole speech, including his own embedded third-person contributions, were an accurate transcript of an actual speech. The difference between the two understandings is slight but significant: it reminds us of the description in the prologue of two kinds of translation, sense-for-sense and word-for-word (the prologue, as we saw, used the phrase ‘vel . . . simile’ as one of the markers of the first kind of translation). In the former, the ‘voice’ of the translator is more obvious; in the latter, the voice of the translator is subordinate to that of the source.50 Here, then, we see another form of the unstable boundaries – between one voice and another, between one perspective and another, between sense-for-sense and word-for-word: above all, between the writer as scribe of a divine message and the writer as author of his own message – which seem absolutely to characterise mystical writing. Similar considerations apply even to the visionary frame of the whole work. Suso describes this frame as a ‘figure’, one directly appealing to the senses of sight and sound, as a way of communicating the vividness and immediacy of the experience:

50 A classic instance of the first kind of translation is provided by Love’s Mirror, though Love takes

some pains to distinguish his own voice from that of his source; and, of the second, by Richard Misyn’s translations of Rolle (discussed recently in Marleen Cré, ‘Vernacular Mysticism in the Charterhouse’, Ph.D. thesis (Freiburg, 2001)) and Chaucer’s of Boethius (see Tim Machan, Techniques of Translation: Chaucer’s Boece (Norman, OK, 1984)).

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sub cuiusdam horologii pulcherrimi, rosis speciosissimis decorati, et cymbalorum benesonancium et suavem ac celestem sonum reddencium, cunctorumque corda sursum movencium varietate perornati figura. (p. 9) (under the likeness of a most beautiful clock, decorated with most fair roses and greatly adorned with a variety of well-sounding cymbals making a sweet and heavenly sound and uplifting the hearts of all.)51

As it happens, this visionary moment occurs nowhere in the Horologium proper, with which it is linked only by the text’s repeated metaphors of flowers and music, and by the twenty-four chapters into which the text is divided. (These latter, presumably, represent the hours of the day and generate the ‘horologium’ of the quotation: as, indeed, of the work’s title.) Suso, that is, is very happy at this point to invoke the conventions of visionary literature to create a metaphoric abstract or summary (admittedly, a very vivid one) of his text. Once again, he shows himself unwilling to distinguish sharply between the roles of writer and visionary. Similarly, conventions of Latin grammatical gender mean that Christ is presented sometimes as the male spouse (‘sponsus’) of the devout female soul (‘anima’) – Suso is here following the Christianised allegorical treatments of that Old Testament hymn to erotic love, the Canticles – and sometimes, in accordance with the treatment of Wisdom in the Sapiential books of the Old Testament, as the female principle of Wisdom (‘sapientia’), to whom the soul (‘animus’) is betrothed (p. 11). Nowhere is this shift realised more dramatically than in the first visionary moments of the Horologium proper (I.i, p. 35) where the figure of Wisdom changes suddenly from a ‘delicata iuvencula’ (delicate young woman) to a young man. For the Middle English mystics, of course, gender was rational, not grammatical, but Cré, writing of Marguerite Porete, has well demonstrated the relevance of this general point for writing in any language that retains grammatical gender, like French; we can see Julian doing something similar, too, when she makes Christ a mother midway through the Long Text of her showings. IV Writing on Hoccleve’s adaptation of Horologium II.ii, I noted the original’s ‘striking exemplification of the unstable boundaries between the real and the fictional, or between acts of meditation and divine revelation’.52 I hope that the present essay has provided ample witness to the truth of this observation, and, consequently, of the usefulness of the prologue to the Horologium as an approach to the Middle English mystics. To take a single example, by way of conclusion: the motif of a spiritual conversation between Christ, the Virgin or 51 Künzle, Horologium, p. 365 develops the allegorical significance of Suso’s rose image by reference to

2 Corinthans 2: 14–15, which speaks of the Christian as the ‘sweet scent’ of Christ. If this reading is correct, we have possibly to consider Suso’s visions as working through the spiritual senses not only of sight and hearing, but also of smell, a sense activated in the lives of mystics like Margery Kempe and St Bridget, and in Julian’s account of the Christian’s experience of God after death (ch. 43, Glasscoe, Revelation, p. 46).

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another saint and the mystic him/herself, a conversation that both Julian and Margery embed in their respective narratives, and which they contrast with their own (framing) narrating and commenting voices, can be readily and obviously accommodated to the frame created by Suso’s prologue, and enables us to shortcircuit the vexed question of the truth of the revelations by invoking the truth of their subject matter and the truth of their effects. (It is the insistence on truth, of course, that distinguishes medieval from modern literary theory, however similar the two may be in other respects.) Suso’s prologue is most immediately relevant to Margery and to Julian, but also, as I hope this essay has shown, has a more general relevance to the study of any mystical text. To put this point at its simplest: however problematical the exercise of the post-lapsarian imagination is for orthodox religious thinkers – witness the Cloud-author’s treatment of the question (chapters 65–7) – Suso has a heartening confidence, shared in varying degrees by his scholastic compeers, and by all of the Middle English mystics, in the power of the imagination, as indeed of all human processes, to point us towards God. This must be a major defence for the ‘literary approach[es] to the Middle English mystics’53 that all of us who teach them, one way and another, have followed.*

52 Roger Ellis, ed., ‘My Compleinte’ and other Poems: Thomas Hoccleve (Exeter, 2001), p. 228 nn.

88–90. 53 Roger Ellis, ‘A Literary Approach to the Middle English Mystics’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradi-

tion in England I, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Exeter, 1980), p. 119. * I owe Marion Glasscoe thanks for her extremely helpful comments on this essay.

APPROACHING MEDIEVAL WOMEN MYSTICS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

13 Approaching Medieval Women Mystics in the Twenty-First Century ANN M. HUTCHISON

I

N teaching English literature, at various levels, I try in courses not ispecifically concerning women writers to include as many women’s voices as I can. Despite much ground-breaking work that has uncovered many long-neglected women writers, in the early period, at least with respect to writers in English, the choice is still somewhat limited, and so one invariably turns to Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. In a survey course aimed at introducing students to the literary tradition of English (the actual title of a course I have been asked to teach many times),1 women mystics – or any mystical writers, for that matter – offer a rather unusual, even strange, perspective. On the other hand, it is precisely because they are mystics – and women as well – that Julian and Margery are concerned with how they present themselves. Thus, including these writers in a ‘traditional’ survey course not only expands the range of the canon, but also introduces issues of gender, and, indeed, of genre as well. Since for some time students have been keen to discuss and learn about gender roles, one can capitalise on this interest in looking back at medieval women writers. In addition, perhaps in reaction to increasing secularisation in many Western societies, there is a growing interest in spirituality, and I have found that students respond with profound and genuine interest to the beliefs of the women mystics and to their devotional practices, many of which are gender-specific.2 One of the first questions one deals with, then, is why there are so few women writers in the early period, and the circumstances that have allowed these particular women to be heard. This inevitably leads to a discussion of the structure and classification of society in medieval times: the estates, the distinct roles of men and women, the stages of life and the age at which maturity is reached, educational possibilities, sumptuary laws (which will have a bearing on Margery), and so on. Although women were generally responsible for the education of young children up to the age of seven, they were not afforded the same educational opportunities as men. This was particularly true in spiritual 1 2

The title, ‘The Literary Tradition of English’, allows scope for study of the language, social and political concerns, and other kinds of artistic expression in the periods covered. I think particularly of visions of the Nativity, conversations with the Virgin, and so forth.

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matters, since in this sphere women not only faced the prohibition of St Paul against teaching, but they were also barred from the university training necessary to give them ‘the authority, and the authoritative language, to communicate spiritual truths’.3 More than men, then, women mystics were confronted with immense disadvantages in attempting to communicate intensely personal experiences that transcended the usual modes of sensory perception. They had to invent a language of their own (a problem encountered to some extent by male mystics as well). They also had to become more bold. Most felt torn between a reluctance to write, since they did not wish to seem presumptuous, and a powerful conviction that God had ‘commanded’ them to transmit his message. Thus women had to find a modus. Birgitta of Sweden, for example, describes how Christ called upon her to be his bride (sponsa mea) and his channel (canale meum), that is, the conduit or vehicle for his message.4 In the introduction to Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature , Petroff discusses the frequent occurrence of such dialogue in the work of women mystics and notes its importance in providing the justification to write.5 Even when they feel empowered, or ‘authorised’, by God’s command, most women still make clear that they themselves would not otherwise presume to write. In fact, one finds that the need to self-deprecate is not unique to women mystics nor to the medieval period, as Virginia Woolf pointed out so cogently in A Room of One’s Own. (When I can, in an attempt to make the medieval period seem less strange and isolated, I find it helpful to give other examples from literature, or elsewhere, that might be more familiar to the students.) Often some form of physical illness (as seen in the case of Julian), or madness, or both (as with Margery) becomes the physical counterpart, or prelude, to what is, in some cases, sheer terror. St Birgitta, we are told, was so ‘extremely terrified’ (perterrita ) when she heard a voice saying to her ‘Woman, hear me’ while she was ‘wrapt in spirit’, that she fled to her chamber and at once confessed and received communion. This happened again, and it was only on the third occasion, when the voice addressed her more reassuringly, that she dared to listen. Something of this kind of terror is captured by Yeats in his ‘Leda and the Swan’, which is, after all, an annunciation poem; one also thinks of the thoroughly frightened Virgin in Rossetti’s early painting of the Annunciation. 6 Frequently women mystics speak of their illiteracy and simplicity. This modesty is, I think, intended more as a sign of ‘spiritual poverty’ and dependence on God than a statement to be taken literally. Just as Mary, the humble handmaiden of the Lord, is the recipient of the Holy Spirit and the vessel of the Word, so too the visionary becomes the receptacle for words from the divine. Birgitta of Sweden often described the feeling of divine love in her heart as a 3 4

5 6

Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York & Oxford, 1994), p. 4. An accessible discussion of St Birgitta’s ‘calling vision’ can be found in Bridget Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, Studies in Medieval Mysticism I (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 64–7. The full Latin text is found in Acta et processus canonizacionis beate Birgitte , ed. Isak Collijn, Svenska Fornskiftsällskapets Samlingar, 2nd ser., vol. I (Uppsala, 1924–31), pp. 80–1 (hereafter cited as Acta et Proc.). Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature (New York & Oxford, 1986), pp. 23–8. Rossetti’s painting is entitled ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini’ and was painted in 1850.

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kind of pregnancy, and her confessors, who both saw and actually touched her softly at such times, wrote in her vita that while praying she was ‘glowing with so much love for God and the fire of divine love that she felt a living thing to be in her heart, as if an infant was lying there, turning and revolving in her’.7 In a less dramatic mode, the thirteenth-century Franciscan tertiary, Angela of Foligno (1248–1309), eloquently explains how she felt: I experienced all these things in myself, and I would not have known how to discern such things well except that my soul came into a certain truth, for when love is pure, it . . . sees itself to be nothing. That which does not permit the soul to be deceived in such feelings is poverty of spirit. For in a divine locution made to me by God I heard poverty commended with so much proof as such a great good that it completely exceeds our understanding.8

Here Angela also raises the issue of ‘discernment of spirits’ (discretio spirituum), that is, the ability to distinguish between good and evil spirits. Though the distinction is crucial to all mystics, it is of particular concern to women; fear of deception from the devil prompted Birgitta to call on her confessors when she experienced ‘mystical pregnancy’, and it is this same fear of deception that repeatedly distressed Margery, leading her to seek constant reassurance from experts, including, among others, Julian. 9 While women make particular use of the ‘modesty topos’, their claims, as I have suggested, should not necessarily be taken at face value. In first writing about her understanding of her visions in the Short Text, Julian suddenly interrupts her narrative: ‘Botte god forbede that
e schulde saye or take it so that I am a techere, for I meene nou
t soo, no I mente neuere so. For I am a woman, leued, febille, & freylle.’ (But god forbid that you should take me for a teacher. Such is not my intention and never has been. I am a woman, ignorant, weak and frail.)10 Yet, the Showings indicate an ability to write with what Jean Leclercq in his preface to the Classics of Western Spirituality edition (which is well worth reading) describes as ‘theological precision’, especially in applying the symbolism of the Motherhood of God to the ‘Trinitarian interrelationships’.11 In 7

Claire L. Sahlin, ‘ “A Marvelous and Great Exultation of the Heart”: Mystical Pregnancy and Marian Devotion in Bridget of Sweden’s Revelations’, Studies in St Birgitta and the Brigittine Order, I, ed. James Hogg, Analecta Cartusiana 35:15 (Salzburg, 1993), pp. 108–28, at p. 109; Sahlin’s translation is from Acta et Proc., p. 500. In the Royal Library in The Hague, there is a postcard of an illumination of the Visitation found in a fifteenth-century Book of Hours from Tours, which depicts Elizabeth feeling the babe leap in Mary’s womb – here showing that the need for the bodily counterpart is expressed by visual means. (The late art historian, Myra Orth, assured me that such representations of the Visitation are not uncommon in the fifteenth century.) 8 Petroff, Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, p. 26. 9 The Book of Margery Kempe, ed. Barry Windeatt (Harlow, 2000; repr. Cambridge 2004), ch. 18, pp. 117–23 (hereafter cited as Windeatt). 10 Quoted from the Short Text of Julian’s Revelations, ch. 6. See Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love: The Shorter Version ed. from B.L. Add. MS 37790, ed. Frances Beer, Middle English Texts 8 (Heidelberg, 1978), pp. 47–8; this is a useful edition for upper-year and graduate students. Beer has also translated the Short Text, see Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, The Motherhood of God, an Excerpt, Library of Medieval Women (Cambridge, 1998); this passage is on p. 33. 11 Julian of Norwich: Showings, trans. and ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh, Preface by Jean Leclercq (New York, 1978), p. 9.

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fact, immediately following her disclaimer, Julian continues more confidently: ‘Botte I wate wele this that I saye. I hafe it of the schewynge of hym tha[t] es souerayne techare. Botte sothelye charyte styrres me to telle
owe it’. She wonders aloud, as it were, if just because ‘I am a woman, schulde I therfore leve that I schulde nou
t telle
owe the goodenes of god, syne that I sawe in that same tyme that [it] is his wille that it be knawen?’ Prophetically, she suggests that her audience will in time ‘forgette me that am a wrecche . . . & behalde Ihesu that ys techare of alle’.12 Indeed, the longer version focuses much less on the speaker and her circumstances, beginning with a more general disclaimer: ‘This reuelation was made to a symple creature vnlettyrde’ (This revelation was made to a simple, unlettered creature).13 ‘Creature’ is also, of course, the term of self-reference chosen by Margery in her Book.14 Although we know nothing specific about Julian, she must have come from a fairly comfortable background in order to be able to engage so fully in a devotional life, as we sense must have been the case even before her illness and her visions. Margery, we do know, was a member of the urban elite, for she herself tells us – and her long-suffering husband – all about the importance of her father. Thus, with Margery, as with Julian, one has to gauge what her ‘illiteracy’ might mean. She seems to have had an excellent memory, and scholars today speak of her ‘oral literacy’, since she seems to have been able to retain, repeat and ‘digest’ texts she must have heard, or had read to her. The Prologue to her book seems to indicate that she could not write, but this may mean sustained writing as copying would require. One wonders if a woman who could run a household would be completely unable to read or write. In her Vita, Birgitta of Sweden is portrayed instructing her husband to study and to read! She herself could read and write, as we learn from the fact that she recorded many of her own visions, but she did so in the vernacular. On the other hand, having joined her children when their tutor taught them Latin, she was advanced enough to be able to ‘correct’ the translations of her visions made by her confessors; and we know that later, when in Rome, she continued her study of Latin. 15 Like many women mystics, Julian and Margery looked to other women as role models. Early in the short and long versions of her Showings, Julian tells us that she prayed for three graces. In describing the first, the desire to experience the Passion at first hand, she thinks of Mary Magdalene, strongly wishing to stand with her and others as witnesses.16 She also asks to feel something of the 12 Beer, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations, p. 48. 13 A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich, ed. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh,

Studies and Texts 35, 2 vols (Toronto, 1978), II, p. 285; Julian of Norwich: Showings, trans. and ed. Colledge and Walsh, p. 177. In the long version, this is the second chapter, as the first is taken up with a short description of the sixteen showings, suggesting that the compilers of this version are aware of the needs of their audience. 14 It is important to point out to students that for Margery and Julian ‘creature’ signifies ‘created by God’; and to help students remember, I usually distribute a sheet of keywords, which besides vocabulary may also include historical information and definitions of other kinds; I have been amazed at how much the students remembered as a result. 15 See, for example, Morris, St Birgitta, pp. 56, 102, etc. 16 Mary Magdalene, an example of a woman who fell, but whose full forgiveness could be seen in the fact that she was the first person to whom the risen Christ appeared, was a figure of utmost importance to women in the late Middle Ages. Her story, its interpretation and the reasons for its strong

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compassion of ‘oure ladye’.17 Perhaps more interestingly, however, in the short version she links her third request, the desire for three wounds, to a story she heard ‘a man telle of halye kyrke . . . of Saynte Cecylle’. Although the ‘thre woundys with a swerde in the nekke’ are what stirred Julian to conceive ‘a myghty desyre’,18 in her ‘Storye’, or vita, St Cecilia is also presented as a fostering spiritual mother who teaches those she converts in her house. The fostering spiritual mother and teacher are aspects that Chaucer picks up in his version,19 and these notions may, in fact, represent something very much in the air, which responded to the needs of the times. Whether consciously or not, Julian, like Cecilia, becomes very much a caring ‘teacher’ or spiritual guide for her ‘even-Christians’, that is, her fellow-Christians to whom she addresses her book, and for whom, it seems, she is a revered holy woman. Margery too looks to Mary Magdalene, the redeemed sinner, and Mary Magdalene, as we know from the work of David Mycoff, fulfilled a number of roles in the medieval mind.20 To an even greater extent, however, St Birgitta of Sweden is an important mentor. Like Margery, Birgitta was married and had children, and later in life, she and her husband came to an agreement to live chaste lives, devoted to God. Birgitta, or Bridget, or Bride – as Margery usually calls her – was well known in England from the late fourteenth century, particularly in East Anglia, which had close links with the Continent, both commercially and spiritually. Birgitta had died in Rome in 1373 and a number of prominent English clergy were among those giving testimony for the canonisation proceedings that concluded with the canonisation in 1391. Margery very often seems to wish to out-do Birgitta in her visions,21 but she also seems to have followed in her footsteps: like Birgitta, she went on pilgrimage to Rome, Compostela, and the Holy Land; in Rome she visited Birgitta’s house and sought out those who knew her; one probable motivation for her last-minute trip to Danzig may have been to visit a newly established Bridgettine house there – in any case, on her return she visited the English

17

18 19 20

21

appeal to women of all walks of life – often for very different reasons – provides useful background to an understanding of the humility, but strength found in some of the women mystics. See also note 20 below. While Julian does not seek the ‘intimacy’ with the Virgin that the Revelations of Birgitta or Margery’s Book suggest, she does seem in some sense to identify with Mary’s very human expression of motherhood, and also with her acknowledgement of ‘the greatnes of her maker and the littlehead of her selfe that is made’ (A Book of Showings, ed. Colledge and Walsh, II, p. 297). Beer, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations, p. 40. Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Second Nun’s Tale’, The Canterbury Tales, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Boston, 1987), pp. 262–9; see, for example, ll. 538–9. For Margery, see Windeatt, pp. 51, 133, passim. See also A Critical Edition of the Legend of Mary Magdalena from Caxton’s Golden Legende of 1483 , ed. David A. Mycoff, Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies 92: 11 (Salzburg, 1985), and The Life of Saint Mary Magdalene and of her Sister Saint Martha, ed. David Mycoff, Cistercian Studies Series 108 (Kalamazoo, 1989). The late-fifteenth-century Digby play, Mary Magdalen, is thought to have an East Anglian origin, and recent productions have revived critical attention. For a text, see The Late Medieval Religious Plays of Bodleian Mss. Digby 133 and E Museo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, J. L. Murphy, and L. B. Hall, EETS OS 283 (Oxford, 1982). For example, once when Margery felt she saw Christ in the sacrament, he addressed her with such an assurance: ‘My dowtyr, Bryde say me nevyr in this wyse’ (Windeatt, ch. 20, p. 129, l. 1523).

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house of the order, Syon Abbey.22 Birgitta’s example thus ‘empowers’ Margery. An even more telling instance, as Barry Windeatt notes, is that the writing of the ‘final’ version of her Book is begun on 23 July, the feast day of Birgitta’s death.23 Birgitta was very much a prophet of reform, and she did not hesitate to point out the sinful ways of those around her, including highly placed clergy, or even the king of Sweden – and the kings and queens of other countries (e.g., the queens of Naples and Cyprus), for that matter. Birgitta, unlike Margery, was born into a noble Swedish family with links on her mother’s side to the ruling dynasty; this status undoubtedly helped give her the confidence and political savvy that made her ‘mission’ ultimately so successful. Margery, however, does not seem to have been deterred by her more modest circumstances, and though she does not seem to mix with the court, she does point out to high ecclesiastical officials, such as the archbishops of Canterbury and York, the shortcomings of those around them. Finally, Margery also seems to have checked the written version of her Book as Birgitta did the Latin translation of her Revelations: i.e., in both cases it was read back, to Birgitta by her confessors and to Margery by her amanuensis. An important area I like to include in courses with upper-year undergraduates and postgraduates is that of manuscripts and textual transmission. This is particularly instructive with respect to English women mystics, for while texts of Rolle and Hilton enjoyed a wide circulation, those of Julian and Margery did not. In fact, Julian and Margery are probably better known today than they were in their own time – and indeed the reverse is undoubtedly true of Birgitta, who was very well known in England and various parts of Europe in the late fourteenth century and throughout the fifteenth. For Julian, one medieval copy of her Short Text survives in the mid-fifteenth-century Amherst MS (BL Add. MS 37790), which belonged at one time to the Carthusian, James Grenehalgh, as we know from his monogram and annotations, but it seems to have been passed on to a ‘Vincit Winge’, tentatively identified by Colledge and Walsh as the astronomer Vincent Winge (1619–68) of North Luffenham, Rutland, and Francis Peck, rector of Godeby by Melton in Leicestershire, before reaching William Constable and Lord Amherst, whose book plates are inside the front cover.24 The only surviving medieval version of the Long Text is in Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4, which is a very much excerpted version. This text has recently been edited by Hugh Kempster; he has also written an instructive essay about its audience.25 One of my graduate students examined this text and 22 See, for example, Windeatt, Part I, ch. 39 concerning the visit to Rome, ch. 45 to St James, ch. 28 to

Jerusalem; and Part II, ch. 4 to Danzig, ch. 10 to Syon Abbey; see also the very helpful ‘Outline of Chapters in the Book’, pp. ix–xv. This edition is especially good for advanced students, as it makes use of and builds upon the EETS edition of Meech and Allen; Windeatt’s Penguin translation has a good introduction and notes, and is useful for survey courses and beginning undergraduates. 23 The text actually reads: ‘And so he gan to wryten in the yer of owr Lord 1436, on the day next aftyr Mary Maudelyn’ (Windeatt, p. 51). The feast day of Mary Magdalene, as Windeatt notes, is 22 July. 24 See, A Book of Showings, ed. Colledge and Walsh, I, pp. 10–12. 25 The edition is: ‘Julian of Norwich: The Westminster Text of A Revelation of Love’, Mystics Quarterly 23:4 (1997), pp. 177–245 (note: pages 244 and 245 have been reversed); the essay is: ‘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 & London, 1998), pp. 257–89.

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became fascinated with some of its telling comparisons with the Long Text as we know it: it is more Marian-centred, it attempts to efface its woman author – except for what must have been a mistake on the part of the scribe who includes a marginal note of instruction, and so on. Although there must have been a number of medieval copies of the Long Text, as Felicity Riddy surmises in a discussion of the problems of editing Julian’s work in her essay ‘Julian of Norwich and Self-Textualization’,26 the three surviving complete MSS belong to the seventeenth century, as do the Upholland excerpts. The MS situation of Margery Kempe’s Book is even more limited. Until 1934, she was only known through the seven-page version of meditations printed by Wynkyn de Worde in about 1501 (STC 14924) and reprinted in 1521 by Pepwell (STC 20972), who mistakenly called her an anchoress.27 De Worde, however, does mention that he has taken his excerpts ‘out of the boke of Margerie kempe of lynn’, the search for which long occupied scholars. Indeed, the discovery of the fifteenth-century copy of Margery’s Book was very much a matter of serendipity – a word one finds oneself using a great deal in discussing the survival of a number of medieval texts. In this case, it was the search for a ping-pong ball in a recently inherited northern English stately home that brought the leather-bound volume to light instead of the desired ping-pong balls, and it was the scholarly bent of the visiting player that saved it from being consigned to the bonf ire.28 Although its twentieth-century owner did not at first realise what was in the back of his cupboard, the same is not true of its medieval owners. Whether or not it originated there, this manuscript belonged to the Carthusian house of Mount Grace, and that it was a book read closely and seriously we know from the work of four annotators, who corrected, noted and commented upon the text. In his edition, Windeatt has included in an appendix a complete list of the annotations by all four. The work of the fourth, who wrote only in red ink, is of special note. His comparisons of Margery’s experiences with those of Rolle, Methley and Norton were pointed out by Allen, but there is more to be made of the work of this amazing ‘red annotator’, and Windeatt’s list provides a helpful starting point. I am particularly fascinated by what I have counted as approximately twenty instances of his inscription of the sacred monogram Ihc, especially in the light of the growing interest in the cult of the Holy Name, and its celebration or observance, in the late-medieval period. This repeated inscribing in key parts of the text has led me to wonder if indeed for this annotator the Book itself might not have been regarded as a sacred object – we do have examples of books other than the Bible or Gospels being revered in this way (Robert Grosseteste’s Anglo-Norman Chasteu d’amur was known to have been clutched in childbirth, for instance).

(McEntire edited a similarly useful volume on Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe: A Book of Essays (New York, 1992).) 26 See Editing Women, ed. Ann M. Hutchison (Toronto, 1998), pp. 101–24. 27 Windeatt reproduces this early print in his edition, pp. 430–4; see also his introductory remarks, pp. 429–30. 28 The story is told by Hilton Kelliher, ‘The Rediscovery of Margery Kempe: A Footnote’, The British Library Journal 23:2 (1977), pp. 259–63.

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In classes of students who have previously encountered medieval texts, we consider the manuscript tradition of the texts we read in some depth, and this inevitably leads to a ‘formal’ introduction of the Carthusians, Carthusian spirituality and the Carthusian Order in England. In a very accessible article, somewhat facetiously entitled ‘Dial M for Mystic’, Vincent Gillespie discusses the role of the Carthusians in the dissemination and translation of mystical texts.29 The Carthusians seem, in fact, often to have been the translators into Middle English of a number of mystical texts, including those from the Continent, but at the same time, they also seem to have exercised a control over their circulation, which may to some extent explain the scarcity of medieval versions of Julian and Margery texts.30 As previously mentioned, the same poverty is not true of Middle English texts of the Revelations of Birgitta of Sweden. While there are two ‘complete’ versions, both in manuscripts collected by Sir Robert Cotton (BL MSS Claudius B i and Julius F ii), there are numerous excerpts in devotional collections. Roger Ellis has usefully discussed these in his detailed study, ‘ “Flores ad Fabricandam Corona”: An Investigation into the Uses of the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England’, and although I expect that since then even more have turned up, his categories indicate subjects of interest to medieval audiences.31 These are: first, revelations containing a prophetic element (in her biography of Birgitta, Bridget Morris discusses the importance of this aspect32); second, visions describing the requirements of the spiritual life (which would appeal to those wishing to live devoutly) and also pertaining to the strictly enclosed contemplative order of which she was founder; and third, information concerning the life of Christ and the Virgin. In this last category of special interest is the long-awaited revelation of the Nativity, which in a sense ‘crowns’ Birgitta’s visionary experience. In a good example of affective piety, Birgitta herself is an eyewitness, and we see touches of the mother of eight children as she notices that the Virgin regained her shape immediately!33 The iconography of radiance surrounding the new-born babe, found in many late-fourteenth- and fifteenth-century representations, can be traced to Birgitta’s vision. This vision is one that Margery too seems to have been well aware of, as her own response to a vision of the Nativity suggests.34 Other continental mystics, especially Mechtild of Hackeborn, one of the 29 See ‘Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon

30

31 32

33

34

Brethren’, The Medieval Mystical Tradition, England, Ireland and Wales , ed. Marion Glasscoe, Exeter Symposium VI (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 241–68. As noted above, the only medieval witness of Julian’s Showings is the Short Text and it is in the mid-fifteenth-century Amherst MS (British Library, Additional 37790); the complete versions of the Long Text are post-medieval. Margery’s Book survives in one MS also of the mid-fifteenth century (British Library, Additional 61823). Both MSS have strong Carthusian connections. The article may be found in Medium Ævum li (1982), pp. 163–86. Morris, St Birgitta of Sweden, p. 66, passim. For advanced students, Claire Sahlin’s Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophecy, Studies in Medieval Mysticism 3 (Woodbridge, 2001), is an excellent study. One of the current Vadstena nuns points out Birgitta’s broad hips in the celebrated carving, now in the Vadstena Klosterkyrka (the former church of the monastery), possibly done by someone who had actually seen or known Birgitta. Windeatt, ch, 6, pp. 77–8 and notes 581, 582, 585.

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Helfta mystics, and Catherine of Siena, are known in England in this period through Middle English translations of their works and, in the case of Catherine, of a vita as well. Space precludes fuller discussion, but these women are introduced in Rosalynn Voaden’s useful collection of essays, Prophets Abroad . The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England.35 In conclusion, one senses that despite their marginalisation in ‘official’ medieval religious life, these were women who sought a means to practise and express their devotion and to pass on their experiences. They shared an inner strength and sense of purpose, and – to varying degrees – a developing confidence in their task. Even Margery, perhaps the least confident of those we have considered, stands her ground in ecclesiastical courts when challenged – her fear and yet her ‘bravery’ and then her final triumph before the archbishop of York (chapter 52) indicate the strength of her faith, something I find very moving and something students also respond to. And, in another vein, the soaring, almost poetic, prose of Julian’s final chapter rarely fails to move, with her modest, but firm ‘Thus was I lernyd, þat loue is oure lordes menyng’.36

35 Prophets Abroad. The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn

Voaden (Cambridge, 1996). In addition to the mystics mentioned above, the essays also include reference to the works of Hildegard of Bingen and Marguerite Porete. 36 A Book of Showings, ed. Colledge and Walsh, II, ch. 86, p. 733.

14 Contexts for Teaching Julian of Norwich MARION GLASSCOE

The Present Research Position

R

ECENT research relating to Julian of Norwich has tended to go in two imain ways. One comments on her showings in terms of medieval theology;1 the other looks at them in the context of women’s writing and the issues of feminist scholarship.2 She has also attracted the attention of those discussing the issues of apophatic and cataphatic religious discourse,3 and discussion has emerged recently in relation to the genre of her writing.4 Of them all, some of the feminist studies would seem to provide the best lead-in to Julian for students studying her work on non-specialist courses, particularly the work of Frances Beer and also Grace Jantzen who, in her recent books, talks about Julian in the idiom of contemporary theological and gender issues and makes her sound a good read. Julian’s unresolved tensions between her inner convictions and the teaching of the Church, and her use of the concept of Jesus as mother, both of which align her with a feminist philosophy of religion that wants to stress flourishing and natality as a cultural symbolic, are foregrounded in these studies. But whether Julian is being read by students who possess little understanding of the Christian tradition, following courses on specifically 1

2

3

4

Denise Baker, Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book (Princeton, 1994); ‘The Image of God: Contrasting Configurations in Julian of Norwich’s Showings and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection’, in Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, ed. Sandra J. McEntire (New York & London, 1998), pp. 61–90; Nicholas Watson, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’ in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, V, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 79–100. Frances Beer, Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1992); Sandra McEntire, ‘The Likeness of God and the Restoration of Humanity in Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, in Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 3–33; Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist (Philadelphia, 1995); Joan M. Nuth, Wisdom’s Daughter and the Theology of Julian of Norwich (New York, 1991); Grace M. Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 1995); and Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Manchester Studies in Religion, Culture and Gender (Manchester, 1998). Vincent Gillespie and Maggie Ross, ‘The Apophatic Image: The Poetics of Effacement in Julian of Norwich’, in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, V, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 53–77; Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 1995); Cynthea Masson, ‘The Point of Coincidence: Rhetoric and the Apophatic in Julian of Norwich’s Showings’, in Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 153–81. Christopher Abbott, Julian of Norwich: Autobiography and Theology (Cambridge, 1999); Brad Peters, ‘A Genre Approach to Julian of Norwich’s Epistemology’, in Julian of Norwich: A Book of Essays, pp. 115–52.

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medieval literature, or pursuing non-specialist courses, some attention needs to be drawn to the medieval context out of which she writes; such a context illuminates her unique qualities and both her distance from, and her proximity to, a contemporary situation.

Specific Contexts for Teaching In the past students working on Julian of Norwich were usually following medieval specialist courses and had some knowledge of medieval world-views. They might study – students at Exeter certainly did – the art and literature of affective devotion in the Middle Ages and look at sermons, the Ancrene Wisse and religious lyrics as a useful lead-in to contemplative texts. The term contemplative, rather than mystical, is used here deliberately.5 It concentrates more precisely on the area of religious experience with which these texts are concerned and the manner in which they work: they point to the possibility of a crossover between intellectually self-conscious formulations of faith and a perception of how these are ultimately insufficient in face of an ultimate reality designated God. The term contemplation in the medieval period allowed for this range of meaning. The strategy of the texts produced by Hilton or the Cloud-author or Julian is to inform much as a map does. Maps are needed until familiarity with the territory is reached when they may not be necessary. Even this is a bad example since maps chart a place and these texts can only point a way to a place that can be talked about as both known and unknown. A poem draws the reader back to itself, which is where the centre of attention is embodied. By contrast contemplative texts in some ways exist to be transcended. One of the difficulties to be faced in the present academic climate is how to read Julian with students who have no prior knowledge of the medieval period. They may come across her during one twelve-week semester course on medieval literature examined at the end of it and never revisited, or find her on a non-specialist option of some kind. In either case, sadly, she will increasingly be read in translation, but the possibility of referring to the Middle English text need not be ruled out.6 Some kind of background introduction to the medieval culture of affective devotion is essential if Julian is to be read in any kind of historical perspective, but such information is beyond the scope of this essay which will concentrate exclusively 5

6

The term mystical can suffer from both too vague an area of denotation and also, occasionally, precise meanings in a historical context, a combination that is not helpful in the kind of study under discussion. See further, Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, passim, but especially ch. 2. Textual reference here will be to the Middle English version of Julian’s Revelations. Her text exists in two forms one of which appears to be an extended and later version of an earlier shorter account. The most popular view is that the Short Text was written shortly after 1373, the time of her visions, and the longer one twenty years later shortly after 1393. For an alternative view, see N. Watson, ‘The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love’, Speculum 68 (1993), pp. 637–83. Textual references here will be to the longer version: Marion Glasscoe, ed., Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love, rev. edn (Exeter, 1993). For the shorter version see: Frances Beer, ed., Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love: The Shorter Version ed. from B.L. Add. Ms 37790 (Heidelberg, 1978). For a translated text, see Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love: Short Text and Long Text, trans. Elizabeth Spearing, with an introduction and notes by A. C. Spearing, Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth, 1998).

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on providing ‘fixes’ for perspectives on Julian’s text in three ways (hopefully these may be adapted and modified to varying demands): 1. Rather than starting at the beginning of her book, it might be a good idea to look straight at how she saw the relationship between creator and created, God and man, before discussing the overall structure of her sixteen revelations. 2. It will be suggested that a particular study of the eighth revelation provides a way of focussing this structure. 3. Depending on the time available and the level of engagement possible, students may find it interesting to look at the way Julian deals with the tensions between her own theological position and that of received authority.

Ways in to Julian’s Text The nature of religious experience Modern feminist theology has exposed an obsession with death and a sublimation of death drives in the construction of Christianity in the West,7 and wishes to employ instead a theology of flourishing and becoming.8 It is important to put Julian into such a context because her reflection on her visions that she incorporates into her Long Text, and her emphasis on the ‘werkyng’ of mercy and grace to make good human failing, an activity that she senses is conjoint to God and man, points in this direction. But it is also important first to look at the centrality of death in the medieval period both as a concept and also as a physical reality particularly forced on to consciousness by the plague. Outbreaks of the Black Death occurred during Julian’s lifetime bringing with them obvious reminders of corruption. Any account of flourishing surely also has to take into account the meaning of death, or, as Emily Dickinson has it, its riddle.9 Such consciousness is certainly in Julian’s text and transcends particularities of religious faith and cultural difference. The subject therefore makes a good starting point especially for students who may find it difficult to think about what is involved in more doctrinally specific religious experience. One of the problems I found with the 2000 exhibition, Seeing Salvation, at the National Gallery (London) was that, despite the claim that pictures based on stories central to the Christian faith could ‘speak powerfully to believers and non-believers . . . as a way of understanding our lives’, unless you knew the stories, you would find it hard to see the salvation.10 I have found it helpful to try to get those studying texts like Julian’s to think about why people get concerned about religious faith at all. While some students seem to have an instinctive rapport with what is

7 8 9

Jantzen, Becoming Divine, especially ch. 6. Ibid., p. 13. See below: ‘This World is not Conclusion’, in A Choice of Emily Dickinson’s Verse , selected with an introduction by Ted Hughes (London, 1968, reset 1993), p. 20. 10 There was a book published by the BBC to accompany the exhibition: Neil Macgregor with Erika Langmuir, Seeing Salvation: Images of Christ in Art (London, 2000). See in particular the introduction, p. 7.

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signified by the terms religious dimension, spiritual journey, inner life etc., others find them hard to relate to. Hearing recently a recording of Ted Hughes reading Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘This World is not Conclusion’, I thought that it might well provide a good way in to thinking about the issues that preoccupy Julian. It has an immediately accessible appeal that bears on Julian’s text: its curious see-sawing between certainty and bafflement, the way its lucidity is suggested just out of reach of its syntax. This World is not Conclusion. A Species stands beyond – Invisible, as Music – But positive, as Sound – It beckons, and it baffles – Philosophy – don’t know – And through a Riddle, at the last – Sagacity, must go – To guess it, puzzles scholars – To gain it, Men have borne Contempt of Generations And Crucifixion, shown – Faith slips – and laughs, and rallies – Blushes, if any see – Plucks at a twig of Evidence – And asks a Vane, the way – Much Gesture, from the Pulpit – Strong Hallelujahs roll – Narcotics cannot still the Tooth That nibbles at the soul –

The poem raises questions about what philosophy, sagacity, faith and martyrdom point to and leads to awareness of the limitations of understanding that is, ultimately, despite her best efforts, at the heart of Julian’s text. The final two lines point to a sensitivity to the self which might lead to consideration of what kind of text we are looking at with Julian and suggest her engagement with a faith that the world is not conclusion and her inability to take on board elements of contemporary church teaching that she cannot internalise. The Hereford World Map It might help too, in thinking about the focus of Julian’s text, if students were introduced to the Hereford World Map created by the Lincolnshire cleric, Richard of Haldingham, in the late thirteenth century.11 This map, reproduced on p. 189, epitomises essential aspects of the medieval Western cultural world-view in which the whole of creation is seen sub specie aeternitatis . It could be noted that the map is oriented not to the north but to the east, the direction from which it was believed in the medieval period that Christ would return 11 See P. D. A. Harvey, Mappa Mundi; The Hereford World Map (Toronto, 1996); Naomi Reed Kline,

Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge, 2001).

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Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. To view the image on this page please refer to the printed version of this book.

Hereford Cathedral, The Hereford Mappa Mundi. Used by kind permission of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford and the Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust

at the Last Judgement; that at its centre is Christ crucified; that the geographical information on the map is secondary to its purpose of spiritual teaching. The map contains information from biblical history, and details of pilgrimage routes. Many of the beasts portrayed on it in their appropriate regions would have been familiar from bestiaries and have had known allegorical significance. So the pelican in Asia revives its young with blood from its own breast and was known as a type of Christ. But the world described by Julian as ‘round as a balle’ (chapter 5, p. 7) is suspended in an overall frame, we might say blown into a space that surrounds and dominates it. Above is a portrayal of

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Christ in glory displaying his wounds at the Last Judgement, with those rising to bliss in heaven on his right (our left) and those condemned to hell on his left (our right) being pushed downwards into hell mouth. Mary stands beneath Christ making intercession for those to be saved. So there is a double focus. In the world Christ is crucified but ultimately he is an eternal reality beyond it, and all this is intimately bound up with the ultimate destiny of people. Another thirteenth-century map, slightly earlier than that in Hereford, and which was destroyed during the Second World War, came from Ebstorff in Germany. This made the point of Christ’s involvement with the world even more graphically. His head, hands and feet mark, as it were, the compass points of the circular world, which he thus carries as his body. It is a very palpable portrayal of Julian’s comment that the world is ‘all that is made’, ‘it lesteth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so all thing hath the being be the love of God’ (chapter 5, p. 7).12 We know that in the eighteenth century the Hereford map was the centre panel of a triptych that contained the Annunciation, ‘the Virgin and the Angel’, flanking it. The exact date of these flanking panels is not clear but the idea of the history of the world and its destiny conceptualised in relation to the Incarnation and Last Judgement is at the heart of medieval theology and of Julian’s text.13 At four points on the outer circle of the created world on the Hereford map labels opening into roundels project out into the space of the frame and carry the letters in gold leaf M O R S. They mark the riddle through which all must go to find the species that stands beyond. Thus it is clear that the whole world is subject to death, which marks the divide between it and the ultimate realities. The map schematises what medieval people knew as the four Last Things: death; judgement; heaven; hell. Students could see how it provides a vivid definition of the conceptual parameters within which Julian’s text works, when the world was seen as a source of revelation about something beyond it, and life itself was a liminal process that needs recognising as such. Three more specific ways in which the map could be used as a point of reference to engage with her text will be suggested. The soul as God’s dwelling place Thinking about that part of human experience that has had the label ‘spiritual’ attached to it might well come more readily to students from other faiths than to those from Western secular culture. A story was recently told me relating to a contemporary holy man – swami – in India, Satya Sai Baba, and a journalist who had come to see him. The journalist, who clearly had designs on the occasion, asked him if he was God. ‘Yes,’ replied the Baba simply. ‘So you really think you are God,’ the journalist urged. ‘Yes,’ replied Baba again. The journalist then asked if he could quote him on that view, and the swami again replied simply, ‘yes’. But then he smiled and added: ‘But so are you. You have just forgotten.’

12 Harvey, Mappa Mundi, pp. 31, 34. 13 Ibid., p. 12 referring to Richard Gough, British Topography, 2 vols (London, 1780), i, pp. 71–6.

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Now although Julian as a Christian theologian would want to qualify this statement, it nevertheless emerges from a cultural consciousness that illuminates medieval contemplative writers. And it is with regaining this kind of memory that their texts are concerned, although, confusingly, the Cloud-author, a master of creative paradox, will say we get to that point through a cloud of forgetting. But says Julian in chapter 54 of her Long Text: Our soule is made to be Gods wonyng place, and the wonyng place of the soule is God, which is onmade. And hey vnderstondyng it is inwardly to sen and to knowen that God which is our maker wonyth in our soule; and an heyer vnderstondyng it is inwardly to sen and knowen our soule, that is made, wonyth in Gods substance; of which substance, God, we arn that we arn. And I saw no difference atwix God and our substance, but as it were al God, and yet myn vnderstondyng toke that our substance is in God: that is to sey, that God is God, and our substance is a creture in God. (chapter 54, p. 87)

This makes a good starting point for studying her text. Julian is clearly concerned with the relationship between our identity and God, and although there is a distinction between the creator and the created there is also for her a clear unity between them. It would be helpful if students had looked up substance in the Middle English Dictionary and thought about just what Julian is getting at.14 The word covers various aspects of being, its potential, its essence, its permanent element; in its aspect as potential, and Julian’s development of her understanding of how selves are constituted, there is a link with the theology of becoming.15 But this element of ourselves has become embodied ‘our soule is inspirid into our body, in which we arn made sensual’ (chapter 55, p. 88) and so subject to corruption: ‘in our substance we arn full, and in our sensualite we faylin’ (chapter 57, p. 91). In terms of the map, we are subject to death, which stands between us and the full realisation of our substance, but yet this sensuality is also crucial to what happens to our substance.16 It is the theatre within which ‘substance’ has to be discovered, and that is hard work, work done by us but also by God who is involved in it as Christ in the world: what tyme that our soule is inspirid into our body, in which we arn made sensual, also swithe mercy and grace begynyth to werkyng, having of us cure and kepyng with pite and love. . . . I saw full sekirly that our substance is in God, and also I saw that in our sensualite God is. (chapter 55, p. 88)

This is how Julian conceptualises our struggle to discover and activate the good in ourselves. Further it is God himself working:

14 Middle English Dictionary, ed. Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn and John Reidy (Ann Arbor,

1952–2001). 15 See Jantzen, Becoming Divine, esp. chapters 1 and 7–11. 16 Jantzen observes ‘it is the locus of independence’, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, p. 149.

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these ii partes were in Criste, the heyer and the lower, which is but on soule. The heyer part was on in peace with God in full joy and bliss; the lower partie, which is sensualite, suffrid for the salvation of mankynd. (chapter 55, p. 89)

And in that suffering that seems to be bound up with life in time Julian comes close to another idea in feminist thinking, that transcendence has to do with a humble endurance of everyday life.17 It would be appropriate here, too, to notice how the language Julian uses actually collapses in on itself and in so doing gestures towards something other: ‘We arn beclosid in the Fadir, and we arn beclosid in the Son, and we arn beclosid in the Holy Gost; and the Fader is beclosid in us, and the Son is beclosid in us, and the Holy Gost is beclosid in us’ (chapter 54, p. 87). Literally this seems a process of somersaulting – who is enclosed in whom? But does it matter if we are radically indistinguishable one from the other?

The Trinity It will be difficult to think about Julian in this way much further without encountering the theological doctrine of the Trinity. Julian understands herself in terms of the Christian idea of God as a Trinity, which articulates distinctions within an organic whole whereby God the Father is the creative power, Christ the expression of this and the Holy Ghost the dynamic of love and grace. Some clarification of this theological precision is essential to underpin a reading of Julian who rings variations on this Trinitarian hermeneutic throughout her text. And so in chapter 31 (p. 42) she is given to understand God in terms of a whole range of the language of capability, purpose and assurance. She understands God to say: ‘I may makyn althing wele; I can make althing wele and I wil make althyng wele and I shall make althyng wele; and thou shal see thiself that al manner of thyng shal be wele’. That he seyth ‘I may’, I understond for the Fader; and he seith ‘I can’, I understond for the Son; and where he seith ‘I will’, I understond for the Holy Gost; and where he seith ‘I shall’, I understond for the unite of the blissid Trinite, iii persons and one trouthe; and where he seith ‘Thou shal se thiselfe’, I understond the onyng of al mankynd that shalle be save into the blisful Trinite.’

In the chapters on which I have concentrated Julian varies this definition in terms of God as a creating Father and Christ as a nurturing mother who delivers man to ‘ioye and to endles lyvyng’ (chapter 60, p. 97) and the Holy Ghost who energises man to co-operate with this activity (chapter 59). And at the heart of her understanding of this activity is the death of Christ who died bearing us to bliss. For Julian he is the key to the riddle of death and the species that stands beyond. He straddles what we feel is a divide but is what Julian sees as a 17 See Jantzen, Becoming Divine, p. 252.

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continuum, for death is the gate through which we can finally enter the city of God, our substance. And here is the crux of the matter. For Julian the Incarnation and Passion of Christ is a paradigm by which she can assimilate experience and go beyond it. We are all of God but we have forgotten it, and the way back is Christ: ‘And thus Criste is our wey, us sekirly ledand in his lawes, and Criste in his body mytyly berith up into hevyn; for I saw that Crist, us al havand in him that shal be savid be him, worshipfully presentith his Fader in hevyn with us’ (chapter 55, pp. 87–8). To the extent that Christ is not seen or ignored, the divine is crucified and our essential nature with it. This is the key to the transition between here and the hereafter (both of which are so vividly portrayed on the Hereford Map) and she cannot think of making it in any other way (chapter 19, p. 29 and Chapter 21, p. 31). An approach to Julian’s text in terms of the structure of her revelations At this stage of the discussion attention can more easily be drawn to the structure of Julian’s whole text, which has developed out of a series of sixteen revelations, five of which are directly concerned with the Crucifixion. This is the second point at which to refer back to the Hereford Map. It projects a complex dimensional awareness. In the world Christ is crucified, and in the map of the realities of the world he is at its centre; but at the same time it is possible to see Christ above it in glory. You can move ‘sodenly’ between the two images and understand that the final reality is that of Christ in glory transcending suffering in time. In the same way Julian says that she ‘understode that we be now . . . in his crosse with hym in our peynys and our passion, deyng; and we wilfully abydyng in the same crosse with his helpe and his grace into the last poynte, sodenly he shall chonge his chere to us, and we shal be with hym in hevyn’ (chapter 21, p. 31). This quotation comes from a passage in the eighth revelation. Students could look at this showing in chapters 16–21 and think about it in relation to two Middle English lyrics. The f irst is short enough to quote in full. Quanne ic se on rode Jesu mi lemman, And besiden him stonden Marie and Johan, And his rig iswungen, And his side istungen, For the luve of man Wel ou ic to wepen And sinnes forleten, Yif ic of luve can, Yif ic of luve can, Yif ic of luve can.

The other is longer: the vernacular dialogue between Mary and the crucified Christ based on the Stabat Mater sequence.18 Together they make a useful 18 English Medieval Religious Lyrics, ed. Douglas Gray, rev. edn (Exeter, 1992), No. 33, p. 33 and No.

23, p. 18 (see Appendix).

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lead-in to a discussion of Julian’s eighth showing. The first is a clearly voiced emotive recreation in order to prompt some inner recognition of sin, sorrow and amendment; the force of the repeated hypothesis ‘yif ic of luve can’ invites discussion. The second is more complex, taking its impulse from affective devotion but incorporating more complex argument that puts compassion with Christ’s sufferings into a wider perspective. Like Julian’s text, it moves suddenly from contemplation of death to glory: ‘When he ros than fel thi sorwe’ and finally modulates into a prayer to Mary as Queen of heaven for deliverance from sin. There are obvious points of reference here with the Hereford Map. Particular study of the eighth revelation Thinking about the ways in which Julian’s eighth showing is both like and unlike these lyrics might help to focus on the nature of vision. Since in both versions of Julian’s text the eighth showing is visual and contains words spoken by Christ – ‘where is now ony poynt of thy peyne or thyn agreefe?’, chapter 21, p. 31 – and since the version in the Long Text is generally permeated by enlightened understanding added to the Short Text, it provides a good opportunity to discuss her own account of how she receives visionary experience: ‘All this was shewid by thre: that is to sey, be bodily sight and by word formyd in my understondyng and be gostly sight’ (chapter 9, p. 14; cf. chapter 73, p. 117). This also provides an opportunity to talk about the visionary nature of women’s contemplative experience in the medieval period and about the argument that their visions enabled them to claim an authority to speak, though such authority has to be negotiated through the controlling authority of the Church dominated by educated male clergy, and in some ways institutionally corrupt in the late-medieval period. Visionary authority is potentially threatening, and this may well account for the obscurity of the history of Julian’s text between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Prior study by students of chapters 10 and 11 of the Short Text version of Julian’s revelations could generate discussion of how the long version became extended in visionary understanding that moves Julian on from contemplating an event to seeing its significance in a process. It could be seen how Julian links Christ’s dehydration and dying to a process of death and failing in the created world and incorporates affective devotion into this vision. But in Julian a sharing of Christ’s pain becomes not just a temporary willed effect of meditation but is understood as part of a process that is characteristic of life: ‘time of passion’ (chapter 21, p. 31). It would be important to stress that the core of the eighth vision is that Julian does not finally see death. Certainly she sees no quick fix to suffering and talks of ‘wilfully abydyng in the same cross with his helpe and his grace into the last poynte’ (chapter 21, p. 31). ‘Poynte’ is another word students might be asked to think about in relation to definitions given in the Middle English Dictionary. It has a variety of meanings, one of which relates to spatial dimension and time, so the ‘last poynte’ here seems to refer to the end of time but not the end of all things as Julian’s final understanding is that the final reality is joy. ‘Sodenly he shall chonge his chere to us, and we shall be with hym in hevyn’ (chapter 21, p. 31). This lends a dimension of faith to the notion of transcendence as humble

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endurance. It would be helpful to draw attention to the fact that this perception incorporates the preceding seven showings which come to a head in the seventh showing just before this central eighth under discussion: for blisse is lestinge withoute ende, and peyne is passasnd and shal be browte to nougte to hem that shal be savyd. And therefore it is not Godds will that we folow the felynge of peyne . . . bot sodenly passing over and holden us in endless likyng. (chapter 15, pp. 23–4)

As a start to studying Julian’s text I have suggested: looking at it in the medieval context of the Hereford map because that conveniently illuminates the conceptual parameters within which she works; then, initiating discussion about her concept of human being and its potential for participation in a work of divine creativity in the world; thirdly, thinking about how she got to this point through a series of visions which were closely related to contemporary cultural forms but which lend her a unique authority despite her feelings of inadequacy as a relatively uneducated woman.19 Questioning of contemporary authority If time allowed it would be useful to look at, or at least draw attention to, another striking feature of Julian’s text: her persistence in questioning God over the presence of evil and suffering in the world, and her obvious difficulty with Church teaching about punishment for sin, an illustration of which is shown at the top of the Hereford Map. In the thirteenth showing she wonders why God allows sin and suffering. She is assured that ‘synne is behovabil, but al shal be wel, and al shal be wel, and al manner of thyng shal be wele’ (chapter 27, p. 38). But she does not rest in that assurance. She does not see how all can be well when such damage has occurred through sin, and she asks God for a clearer understanding. She receives no direct clearing up of her doubts apart from her growing understanding of how human beings can operate to counter evil, which operating is also a divine activity. But her preoccupation with this problem of how all shall be well also leads her to question Church teaching on punishment for sin and to express her own conviction that there is no wrath in God (chapters 33 and 46). She understands that God shal make wele al that is not wele. And in this syte I mervelid gretely and beheld our feith, merveland thus: our feith is growndid in Goddys word, and it longyth to our feith that we levyn that Goddys word shal be savid in al things; and one peynt of our feith is that many creatures shal be dampyd – as angells that fellyn out of hevyn for pride, which be now fends; and man in herth that deyth oute of the feith of holy church, that is to say, thei that be ethen men and also man that hath receyvid christendam and livith uncristen life and so deyth out of charite – all these shall be dampnyd to hel without end, as holy church techyth me to believyn. And stondyng al this, methowte it was impossibil that al manner thyng should be wele as our lord shewid in this tyme; and as to

19 See ch. 2, p. 2. Cf. the shorter version ch. 6, p. 48.

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this I had no other answere in shewyng of our lord God but this: ‘That is impossible to the is not impossible to me. I shal save my worde in al things and I shal make althing wele.’ (chapter 32, pp. 44–5)

Although Julian finds these two positions irreconcilable she says ‘I was not drawne therby from any poynt of the feith that holy church techyth me to levyn’ (chapter 33, p. 46). Grace Jantzen finds it disturbing that Julian would not question the Church in her time.20 But it is almost inconceivable, given the internalisation of ecclesiastical authority and assumptions of female inferiority in the fourteenth century, that Julian could have broken out of the taboo. That she explicitly holds her obedience in tension with her experience of the love of God is a great step in itself. How such a position might be healed she leaves as a hidden mystery, beyond understanding, but not, clearly, beyond her faith (chapters 33, 46, 50). Example of the lord and the servant It is nevertheless in answer to this worry that she is shown the example of the lord and the servant, the huge addition to the Short Text and in terms of its literary strategy one more amenable to a modern reader. It works by teasing out of an initial event a whole series of implications and processes. She sees a lord sitting peacefully who sends out a servant to perform a task. The servant slips and falls and cannot complete it. He cannot see his lord either and does not realise that the lord does not blame him but wants to restore him. This she understands to epitomise the condition of fallen man. A growing understanding of the significance of the story adds details to it. The lord sits in a wilderness dressed in blue, which symbolises steadfastness; the servant is dressed in a spare, ragged, sweaty tunic, which turns out to be flesh exhausted by the sweat of labour. We learn that his task was to ‘delvyn and dykyn, swinkin and swetyn, and turne the earth upsodowne, and sekyn the depnes, and wattir the plants in tyme’ (chapter 51, p. 77). At first sight this looks like the task of Adam turned out of paradise (that too is depicted at the top of the world on the Hereford Map). In this example the initial scene of the lord and the fallen servant is a kind of icon of frozen action. I always find a thrill of recognition, akin to the grasping of a web of meaning in interconnected poetic images, in the fact that it is when Julian has discovered the task to be that of watering the plants in time to make ‘swete flods to rennen and noble and plenteous fruits to springen’ (chapter 51, p. 77), that she moves into seeing that the servant is not just Adam but Christ, and that when Adam fell, God’s son fell; ‘for the rythfull onyng which was made in hevyn, God Son myte not fro Adam, for by Adam I understond all man’ (chapter 51, p. 78); and in the fact that when she realises this, the frozen action can move forward. Christ’s fall into the maiden’s womb precipitates his further falling into death, at which point ‘he began first to shewen his myte for he went into helle, and whan he was there he reysid up the grit rote out of the depe depenes which rythfully was knit to hym in hey hevyn’ (chapter 52, p. 80). And suddenly the constituent 20 Jantzen, Power, Gender and Christian Mysticism, pp. 182 ff.

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elements of the example, wilderness, stained rags, are transformed to the court of heaven, and rich clothing and a crown: not a literal crown but God’s joy in humanity’s restoration understood as a crown. This is the self-defeating language of the visionary contemplative. And here the Hereford Map is not so far away, holding up as it does Adam’s fall and expulsion from paradise, Christ’s crucifixion and the final judgement simultaneously for contemplation. Chapter 51 of Julian’s text works in expected literary ways, but I would not begin with it as a way in. Its status within the visionary sequence is odd and problematic and it is too enmeshed in a web of theological references. But it is appealing if there is time later to take it in.

Conclusion In looking at Julian with students, I would want to have drawn attention to a kind of writing that points beyond the sagacity, philosophy and strong hallelujahs of which Emily Dickinson talks, to a more humble grappling with what may be unknown but at some level of perception inhabits consciousness with a being as ‘positive as sound’. The revelations are full of passion and pain, and images of sin and of all that comes between man and his fulfilment, but the surge of the text is towards transcendence. Julian oscillates between assurance and rational doubts about how her vision of a loving God whose work is to make all things well is compatible with notions of man punished for wrongdoing at the Last Judgement. But her final vision is of her soul as an endless kingdom where God sits because it is his ‘homliest home and his endles wonyng’ (chapter 67, p. 110). This is the ‘selfe poynt’ (chapter 55, p. 88) where the identity of our sensual selves meets our substance, and Julian reiterates the curious paradox at the heart of Christian contemplative writing that the true self is found only in that which is beyond it. ‘And whan it cometh aboven all creatures into the selfe, yet may it not abyden in the beholdyng of the selfe, but all the beholding is blisfully sett in God that is the makar wonand therinn’ (chapter 67, p. 110). Her visionary experience enables her to negotiate her position within Church teaching and to take a steadfast stand on her authority and experience of the self as a theatre of operation wherein God is discovered and recognised. ‘So you think you are God?’ ‘Yes. But so are you. You have just forgotten.’

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Appendix Stond wel, moder, under rode ‘Stond wel, moder, under rode, Biheld thi child wyth glade mode; Blythe moder mictu be.’ ‘Sune, hu may I blithe stonden? I se thin feet, I se thin honden Nayled to the harde tre.’ ‘Moder, do wey thi wepinge; I thole this ded for mannes thinge – For owen gilte tholi non.’ ‘Sune, I fele the dede-stunde; The swerd is at min herte-grunde That me byhycte Symeon.’ ‘Moder, reu upon thi beren! Thou wasse awey tho blodi teren; It doth me werse than mi ded.’ ‘Sune, hu micti teres wernen? I se tho blodi flodes ernen Ut of thin herte to min fet.’ ‘Moder, nu y may the seye, Bettere is that ic one deye Than al mankyn to helle go.’ ‘Sune, y se thi bodi swngen, Thi brest, thin hond, thi fot thurstungen; No selli nis thou me be wo.’ ‘Moder, if y dar the telle, Yif y ne deye, thou gost to helle; I thole this ded for thine sake.’ ‘Sune, thou best me so minde, Ne wit me nout – it is mi kinde That y for the this sorwe make.’ ‘Moder, merci! Let me deyen For Adam ut of helle beyen, And al mankin that is forloren.’

CONTEXTS FOR TEACHING JULIAN OF NORWICH

‘Sune, wat sal me to rede? Thi pine pineth me to dede; Let me deyn the biforen.’ ‘Moder, nutarst thou miht leren Wat pine tholen that childre beren, What sorwe haven that child forgon.’ ‘Sune y wot, y kan the telle – Bute it be the pine of helle More sorwe ne wot y non.’ ‘Moder, reu of moder kare! Nu thou wost of moder fare, Thou thou be clene mayden-man.’ ‘Sune, help at alle nede, Alle tho that to me grede, Mayden, wyf, and fol wymman.’ ‘Moder, y may no lengore duelle, The time is cumen y fare to helle, The thridde day y rise upon.’ ‘Sune, y wyle with the funde, y deye, ywis, of thine wnde, So reuful ded was nevere non.’ When he ros than fel thi sorwe, The blisse sprong the thridde morwe – Blithe moder wer thou tho. Moder for that ilke blisse Bisech ure god ure sinnes lisse Thou be ure cheld ayen ure fo. Blisced be thou, quen of hevene, Bring us ut of helle levene Thurh thi dere sunes miht. Loverd, for that ilke blode That thou sadde upon the rode, Led us into hevene liht.

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LEARNING BY DOING: MARGERY KEMPE AND STUDENTS TODAY

Learning by Doing: Margery Kempe and Students Today CATHERINE INNES-PARKER

R

ECENT research into active learning techniques tells us unequivocally that istudents learn best by doing, and that active learning improves both their success in individual courses and their retention of the material they have learned. I try to incorporate active learning into all my courses, and the assignment I present here is one example of a practice that lets students take ownership of their studies. It is an adaptation of an assignment that I have used in teaching other texts, where a main character is put on trial in order to let the students explore and debate the issues surrounding a complex character or theme in a fictional work: for example, when teaching Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one could put Victor Frankenstein on trial for the murders that his creation commits; when teaching William Faulkner’s story, ‘A Rose for Emily’, Miss Emily Grierson can be tried for the murder of Homer Barron (with a little poetic licence, as she must be raised from the dead to face trial!). In this example, the class puts Margery Kempe on trial for heresy and for disrupting the social order, allowing students to explore the social and religious contexts of Margery’s Book, and to debate her controversial attitudes and behaviour. This is an assignment that I use late in the semester, when students are tired and need a bit of fun. It is infinitely adaptable. If one wishes students to do a great deal of research and gain an in-depth understanding of Margery Kempe’s world, then it can be assigned early in the semester and research can be accumulated throughout the term, with the trial itself forming a capstone. In this way, the students’ research can also inform other texts or authors studied in the course. However, the students can do this assignment just by reading Margery’s Book and doing some quick research at the library, and they can have a great deal of fun doing it without too much time commitment, at a point in the semester when they are swamped with other assignments. It can therefore be used in both specialist courses or non-specialist surveys. It can be used for a large class, with groups taking on the various roles (as outlined in the version presented here). But I have also used it successfully in a small class, where the class is divided into just two groups (prosecution and defence) and each group chooses ‘witnesses’ from the list. For example, in the Fall 2001 semester, I had a class of only twelve: students took on the roles of Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich, John Kempe, Thomas Arundel, Thomas of Marchdale, a fellow-pilgrim, a representative of Margery’s clerical detractors, the mayor of Leicester, the priest whom Margery liked and so forth. I play the part of the

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judge, determining which evidence is admissible (i.e., historically accurate or consistent with Margery’s Book) and which is not – and generally making sure things move along. I give the class one or two class sessions to prepare their cases, since my university has a largely commuting student population, and students find it difficult to meet outside of class time. The trial itself usually takes two classes – one for the prosecution to present its case and one for the defence. We then take a third class to discuss the trial and, as a group (or groups, in a larger class), to come up with our ‘verdict’ or assessment of Margery Kempe. Alternatively, students in a larger class can write a brief essay evaluating the evidence and presenting a verdict. My students tell me that this is one of the best ‘moments’ in the semester – they have fun, they learn much more than they would by having to listen to a lecture, and it provides a welcome break from the normal classroom routine. Because the trial comes at the end of the semester, students in the class know each other well, and are comfortable working together. I also know them well enough to be sure that each student is assigned a role that they can handle, so no one feels overwhelmed. And it gives me a chance to sit back and watch as my students take their learning into their own hands.

The Trial of Margery Kempe English 482 (Dr C. Innes-Parker) Hear ye, Hear ye! Be it Known that Margery Kempe of King’s Lynn has been arrested and will be held for trial on the charges of heresy and disrupting the social order. The Prosecution and Defence will prepare their cases and be ready for trial on Wednesday, 28 November. The following witnesses are called upon to prepare their statements: Group One: Margery’s Neighbours/Business Associates People for Whom Margery has Prayed or Interceded (Chapters 18–24) The Man who Margery liked (Chapter 4) The Dishonest Young Man (Chapter 24) The Broken-Backed Man (Chapters 30, 44) Group Two: Margery Kempe Margery’s Husband, John Kempe Margery’s Son and Daughter-in-law (Book II) Lady Westmorland and Lady Greystoke (Chapter 54) Dame Margaret Florentyne and other supporters in Rome (Chapter 38) Group Three: Margery’s Clerical Supporters (priests, monks, friars, etc., including Julian of Norwich) Margery’s Scribes (e.g. Chapters 24–25) Margery’s Confessor(s)

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The German Priest (Chapters 33–34) Thomas of Marchdale (Chapters 45–49) Group Four: The Vicar of St Stephen’s (Chapter 17) Thomas Arundel, The Archbishop of Canterbury (Chapters 16, 55) Philip Repyngdon, The Bishop of Lincoln (Chapter 15) The Pope’s Legate in Constance (Chapter 27) The Abbess of Denny (Chapter 84) The Abbot and Dean of Leicester Abbey (Chapters 46–49) The Bishop of Worcester (Chapter 45) The Archbishop of York (Chapters 50–54) Group Five: Margery’s Clerical Detractors (priests, monks, friars etc.) The Mayor of Leicester (Chapters 46–49) The Earl of Westmorland and Lord Greystoke (Chapter 54) Margery’s Fellow Pilgrims Margery’s Guide in Germany (Book II) Group Six: The Lawyers for the Prosecution Group Seven: The Lawyers for the Defence

The Assignment So far, we have studied texts that are either fictional or devotional in content, but in Margery Kempe we will encounter a historical person who (more or less) tells her own tale. As you will see, Margery evoked strong reactions in her own day, as she continues to do in ours – readers either love her or hate her, but are seldom ambivalent about her! In order to explore both the reactions of Margery’s contemporaries and our own, instead of our usual class format, our coverage of The Book of Margery Kempe will take the form of a trial. By now, we have studied a number of texts that will provide literary and historical contexts for the material, but you will also need to do some research on your own. In reconstructing or reimagining Margery’s trial (or trials, as she was, in fact, put on trial more than once), we will also to some extent reconstruct and reimagine her life, as we attempt to put ourselves in Margery’s place, and in the places of those who knew her. You have two weeks to research and prepare your cases and/or statements. All ‘evidence’ must come either from The Book of Margery Kempe or from research into the historical context and characters who appear there. For example, you will need to know what a ‘Lollard’ is, you will need to read some introductory material on mysticism and affective devotion, you will need to find out something about the books that Margery might have read and the people she met, and you will need to know something about the roles of women in the early fifteenth century and the laws concerning marriage (for example, the ‘marriage

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debt’). Much of this information can be found in the introduction to the text, or in the material on reserve at the library. The trial will commence on Wednesday, 28 November, and will be conducted during class time for that week. Lawyers for the prosecution and the defence will meet with the witnesses in class on Monday, 26 November.

Useful Terms for Students DEE DYAS, ROGER ELLIS, ANN M. HUTCHISON

Active life. The active life of practical service in the everyday world involved the performance of charitable works (see the Seven Works of Mercy), a simplified regime of prayer (see Primer) and, for those wishing to go further in the spiritual life, the practice of self-denial or ascesis. It was generally considered inferior to the contemplative life. Affective. When allied to ‘spirituality/piety/devotion’, this describes religious devotions that nourish and build on the human affections, encouraging empathy with the sufferings of Christ and imaginative participation in the events of the life of Christ and the saints; sometimes these are located as a stage between the practices of active and contemplative lives. Anchorite/anchoritic. A specific form of religious existence, where a person (anchorite/anchoress) spends his or her life in solitude and prayer, typically in a cell (anchorhold) attached to a church Apophatic. A way of talking about God only by negatives, what God is not; also called via negativa, and represented most strikingly in the work of PseudoDionysius (c.500). Ascesis/ascetic. Practices associated with self-denial, designed to combat vice and develop virtues, so as to prepare the practitioner for fuller encounter with God or to realise a more perfect imitation of Christ. Books of Hours. Books for private lay use, usually containing Offices of the Dead and the Virgin and the Seven Penitential Psalms. See also primers. Canon. Cleric belonging to a cathedral or collegiate church (secular canon), or living under a semi-monastic Rule such as the Rule of St Augustine (regular canon), by contrast with clerics living under fully monastic Rules such as the Rule of St Benedict. Canon law. The body of ecclesiastical rules or laws covering matters of faith, morals and discipline. Canonical hours. See Office. Cataphatic. A way of talking positively about God by analogy and image, in terms of what God is like, also called via positiva, and contrasted with the apophatic. For Christians, this way is focused most immediately and totally in the human person of Christ as the perfect image of God. Confessional. Of or relating to the sacrament of confession. Contemplation, contemplative (life/ideal). Often identified with membership of a religious Order, and generally held to be superior to the active life, the contemplative life was a life of prayer and meditation, in which the contemplative might hope to experience God directly.

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Creed. Statement of Christian faith, of which the most important are the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed and a Creed ascribed to Athanasius. Desert Fathers and Mothers. Christian hermits who moved to the deserts of Egypt and Palestine from the third century onwards. Devotio moderna. Movement originating in Holland at the end of the fourteenth century, under Geert de Groote, and placing great stress on the inner life of the individual. Discernment. The ability to distinguish false visions deriving from the devil from true visions deriving from Christ, or the divine being. Thus Margery Kempe goes to Julian of Norwich for advice concerning the origin of her visions and her uncontrollable tears. Eremitical. Pertaining to hermits, persons who have retired from society to live the spiritual life in solitude. Eucharist (Gk eukharistia, thanksgiving). The central act of the Church’s worship in which bread and wine are consecrated and consumed. Also known as Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper and the Mass. Even-Christians (Middle English, ‘fellow-Christians’). Meaning that in God’s sight all are equal. Both Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe address their ‘even-Christians’ in their work. Extreme unction. See sacrament. Fin’amor. Fine (refined) erotic love, ‘courtly love’, the idealised passion often presented in medieval love lyrics and romances. Free Spirit. Mystics, from the thirteenth century on, whose heretical understandings of themselves as independent of ecclesiastical authority and as living in the freedom of the Spirit brought them into regular conflict with the Church. Friars, friaries. See Mendicants. Glossa Ordinaria. The standard late-medieval commentary on the Bible, its extensive material keyed to the relevant Bible texts by being copied next to them as footor side-notes or interlinear glosses. Gradual Psalms. Psalms 120–34, so called because originally recited by Jews while ascending the Temple steps in Jerusalem. Hermit (Gk eremos, desert). Person who has retired from society to follow the spiritual life in solitude. Unlike anchorites, they were not confined to one place. Host (Lat. hostia, victim). Term used of the consecrated wafer in the Eucharist, the symbolic sacrificial ‘victim’. See sacrament. Hours. See Office. Lectio divina. A distinctive monastic way of reading religious texts, especially the Bible, whereby texts were allowed to generate correspondences with one another in the mind of the reader. Litany of Saints. Invocations for intercession to a list of saints, still used, for example, in the liturgy for Holy Saturday. Little Office of the Virgin Mary. A brief religious service in honour of the Virgin Mary, modelled on the Divine Office. Liturgical year. The calendar of the feasts (Christmas, Easter, saints’ days) and other significant events celebrated throughout the year by the Church. Liturgy. The written text of the formal services of the Church. Mary and Martha. Two sisters described in Luke 10: 38–42 who were widely

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understood during the Middle Ages to symbolise the relation of contemplative and active lives. Mass. Also called the Eucharist, Holy Communion or Lord’s Supper. The chief sacramental service of the Church, incorporating praise, intercession and readings from Scripture. The central action is the consecration of the bread and wine by the priest, recalling the words and actions of Christ at the Last Supper and commemorating the sacrifice that he offered for the sins of mankind on the cross. In the medieval Church the Mass was celebrated daily; it was also offered for the souls of the dead. Mendicant (Lat. mendicus, beggar). A distinctive development of religious life from the late twelfth century, in which groups of men banded together (friars: literally, ‘brothers’) either for purposes of combating heresy (especially, the Dominicans) or to imitate as directly and fully as possible the life of Christ, especially his poverty (the Franciscans). Monastic. Religious life in a monastery or convent as a member of a community of monks or nuns (or very occasionally including both monks and nuns), under a vow of obedience to a Rule (most commonly that of Benedict), and undertaken in part to pray for those living in the outside world. Monk. Member of male religious community. Mystic. A person who has experienced, through contemplation (that is, by grace and without knowing or controlling the means), direct spiritual communion, or communication, with the divine. Nun. Member of female religious order. Office. Formal service(s) of the Church, including Office of the Dead, Office for a Saint, Office for the enclosing of an anchorite, and, most notably, the Divine Office. The latter, as outlined in the Monastic Rules, consisted of the Night Office (Matins) together with seven hours (times) of prayer during the day: Lauds (at dawn), Prime (first hour of the day), Terce (third hour), Sext (sixth hour), None (ninth hour), Vespers (at dusk), Compline (before bed). This pattern was inspired by the words of the Psalmist: ‘I rose at midnight to give praise to thee . . . Seven times a day I have given praise to thee.’ Ps. 119 (Vul. 118): 62, 164. Passion of Christ (Lat. passio, suffering). The physical and psychological suffering endured by Jesus on behalf of mankind during the vigil in the Garden of Gethsemane, arrest, trial, scourging and crucifixion (Matthew 26–7; Mark 14–15; Luke 22–23; John 18–19). Pastoral manuals (pastoralia). Manuals designed to assist priests in carrying out their duties to the laity, for whom such manuals provided religious instruction. Patristic (Lat. pater, father). Of or relating to the Fathers of the Church, including Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory and others. Penance (Lat. poena, punishment). Sacrament involving contrition, confession, satisfaction (e.g. prayer, fasting, almsgiving or pilgrimage) and absolution. Primer. An elementary devotional handbook for the laity, usually including simple prayers for daily recitation. Professed. Having taken the appropriate vows and so been admitted to a religious Order. Rachel and Leah (Lia). Wives of the Old Testament patriarch Jacob (cf. Genesis 29); widely held to symbolise contemplative and active lives respectively.

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Religious. Especially in contrast to ‘secular/lay’. This generally refers to nuns, monks, friars and to the monastic, mendicant, eremitical or anchoritic ways of life they follow. Rule (adj. regular). A way of life prescribed for those belonging to a religious community. Sacrament. Religious rites that enact for the recipient the grace they symbolise. In the Middle Ages there were seven: baptism, Eucharist (the body and blood of Christ, the former represented by the consecrated host or wafer), confirmation, confession (or penance), marriage, ordination, last rites (or extreme unction/anointing). When otherwise unglossed, this term usually refers to the Eucharist. Scholastic commentary. Standard way of providing commentary on the Bible (see also Glossa Ordinaria) and other texts during the high Middle Ages, especially associated with university courses of study. Secular clergy. Clergy living in the world (i.e., not in a monastery), serving as parish priests, chaplains, etc. Seven Deadly Sins. Sins whose commission, if repentance does not follow, lead to damnation: pride, covetousness, envy, anger, lust, gluttony, sloth. The list is in place, though not the precise terms, from the time of St Gregory the Great (c.540–604). Seven Penitential Psalms. i.e., Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143 (Vulgate 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, 142) used from early Christian times in the liturgy. Seven Works of Mercy. Based on Matthew 25: 35–6, and including feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, offering hospitality to strangers, visiting the sick, ministering to prisoners, and burying the dead. Stabat mater (Lat. ‘the mother was standing’). A celebrated anonymous hymn of unknown date on the sufferings of Mary at the Crucifixion. Stations of the Cross. A devotion performed by meditating, and reciting prayers, before each of fourteen images set up (in churches) to commemorate different stages in Christ’s Passion. Trinity. The Christian doctrine of the three ‘persons’ – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost) – being unit ed as one. Two lives. See active and contemplative. Via negativa. See apophatic. Vowess. A woman, especially a widow, who has taken a vow of chastity before a bishop for the rest of her life. Vulgate. The Latin text of the Bible produced by Jerome, and used throughout the Middle Ages in Western Europe; it differs in, mostly minor, respects from the Protestant versions produced after the Reformation.

Index Abbey of the Holy Ghost 44, 147 Aelred of Rievaulx 17 De Institutione Inclusarum 13, 15, 31, 33, 43–4, 91, 135–43 Aidan, St 5 Allen, H. E. 63 Anchoress 8 n.22, 43, 68, 69, 91, 116, 131, 132, 134–7, 207 See also female anchorite Anchorite 3–18, 19–33, 131–43, 207 Ancrene Riwle 133, 134 Ancrene Wisse 8, 12, 13, 14, 17, 19, 22 n.11, 31, 33, 55, 68, 69, 91, 105, 131–2, 133–4, 135, 138, 149, 150, 151, 186 Angela of Foligno 120, 177 Anne of Bohemia 46 Anselm 54–5, 96 Cur Deus Homo 96 De Concordia 96 Antony, St 6, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31 n.54, 33 Apophatic 53, 77, 110 n.46, 151, 185, 207 Aristotelianism 52 Aristotle 85 Athanasius, Life of St Antony 6, 22, 25 Creed 207 Augustine, St 94, 106, 111, 209 De Trinitate, 95 Basil the Great 28 Basset, Thomas 4 n.5, 58 Beguines 150 Benedict, St 5, 7 Benedictine 5, 6, 7, 43, 102, 136 Bernard of Clairvaux, St 7, 77, 146 Sermons on the Song of Songs 55 See also Pseudo-Bernardine Meditationes Piissimae (Most Pious Meditations) Bokenham, Osbern 46 Bonaventure, St 56 Itinerarium Mentis in Deum 52, 92 See also pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Book of Privy Counselling 4, 78, 162 Book of Hours 35, 36, 67, 207 See also Primers Bourchier, Isabel 46 Bride 24, 84, 85, 176 See also mystical marriage, spouse Bridget (Birgitta) of Sweden 56, 89, 101, 118, 120 n.10, 127, 148, 150, 163 n.22, 176–7, 178, 179–80, 182 Brown, Peter 17 Carmelite friars 4, 10, 38, 41, 43

Carthusian 7, 14, 79, 92, 100, 135, 158, 180, 181, 182 n.30 See also Charterhouses Cassian, John 25, 26, 27 Chaucer 40, 63, 64, 67, 69, 75, 91, 100, 131, 148, 179 Charterhouses 67, 172 n.50 Christina of Markyate 12, 17, 32 Clayton, Mary 12 Cloud author 63, 75–86, 88, 90, 147, 154, 160, 161, 167, 170, 186, 191 Book of Privy Counselling 4, 78, 171 Cloud of Unknowing 4, 58, 75–6, 77–82, 90, 117, 146, 149, 151, 153, 157, 159, 162, 167, 174 Pistle of Discrecioun of Stirings 4 Contemplation 51–59, 14, 15, 23, 43, 44, 70, 72, 73, 78, 89, 90, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98–9, 100, 117, 121, 123, 125, 131, 147, 152, 153–4, 167–9, 185, 194, 197, 207 Contemplation of the Dread and Love of God 152–3 Cuthbert, St 5, 6, 30, 33 Damian, Peter 16 Derrida, Jacques 81 Desert 5, 6, 7, 8, 14, 17, 19–33 See also wilderness Desert Fathers 6, 17, 20, 22, 25–9, 30, 31, 135, 207 Desert Mothers 20, 25, 27, 31, 135, 207 Dickinson, Emily 187, 188, 197 Dominican friars 3, 10, 41, 160, 209 Dorothea of Montau 120, 124 n.17 Duffy, Eamon 39, 49 Eleanor de Bohun 46 Elijah 23, 24, 26, 27, 31 Elizabeth of Hungary 118 Eucharist 38–9, 82, 84, 208, 209 See also Mass Female anchorites 9, 68, 69, 103 See also anchoress Felix, Life of Guthlac 6, 30 Franciscans 10, 41, 52, 125, 158, 177, 209 Fraternities 44–5, 49, 85 See also guilds Friars 3, 4, 38, 41, 43, 44, 131, 204, 208 Geoffrey de Bolton 17 Gerson, Jean 89 Gillespie, Vincent 44 n.29, 71 n.33, 182, 185 n.3

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Guilds 39, 44–5, 85, see also fraternities Guthlac, St 6, 22, 30, 33 Hagiography 25, 118–9, 120 n.9 See also Saints’ lives Hali Meiðhad 32, 149, 150, 151 Hereford World Map 188–90, 193 Hermits 3–18, 26, 28, 29 Hildegard of Bingen 150, 183 n.35 Hilton, Walter 63, 87–100, 133, 149, 160, 165, 185 Eight Chapters on Perfection 87 Mixed Life 44, 87, 98–100, 147–8, 158 On the Image of Sin (De Imagine Peccati) 4, 88 Of Angels’ Song 87, 90 Scale of Perfection 4, 44, 54, 56, 58–9, 87, 89–90, 91–9, 99–100, 153–4, 157, 167, 168 Hodgson, Phyllis 4 n.9, 75, 79 Jerome 26, 28, 29, 210 John the Baptist 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 40 Juliana, St 32, 131 Julian of Norwich 3, 57, 63, 64, 77, 82, 88, 101–113, 123, 132, 133, 137, 145, 148, 151, 154, 159, 161, 164, 166, 167, 168, 170, 175, 176, 177–9, 180–81, 183, 185–199 Motherhood 55, 108–13, 173 Katherine Group 17, 31 n.60, 32 Kempe, Margery 3–4, 10, 18, 36, 47, 63, 88, 93, 99, 100, 101, 133, 137, 148, 151, 154, 158, 160, 161, 163–4, 166, 167, 168, 174, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183 Book of Margery Kempe 56–8, 64, 102, 115–128, 157, 181, 203–6 Lagorio, Valerie 87 n.3, 89 n.8, 91 n.14, 92, 100 Langland, William 75, 77, 79, 91, 100, 134 Lay Folks’ Catechism 40, 42 Lay Folks’ Mass Book 42 Lectio divina 42, 136, 208 Lollardy, 47–8, 49, 89, 91, 115, 116, 150, 153, 157, 169, 205 See also Wycliffite Love, Nicholas, Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesus Christ 44, 158, 169 Lover-knight 33, 55 Lydgate, John Invocation to St Anne 46 Legend of St Margaret 46 Mappa Mundi See Hereford World Map Marchale, Thomas 116 Margaret Heslyngton 4 Margaret de Kirkby 4, 10 Mary, Blessed Virgin 31, 43, 46, 108, 111, 112, 124, 125, 150, 153, 172, 176, 190, 193 Mary Magdalene, St 46, 118, 139–40, 142, 178, 179, 180 n.23 Mary of Egypt, St 27, 31 Mary of Oignies 118, 121

Mass 10, 14, 16, 36, 38, 40, 42, 86, 208, 209 Mayr-Harting, Henry 17 Mechtild of Hackeborn 150, 182 Mechtild of Magdeburg 150 Methley, Richard 79, 181 Millett, Bella 66 n.22, 133, 134 Morey, James 48 Moses 23, 24, 26, 31, 52 Mystical marriage 117 See also bride; spouse Passion of Christ 54, 70–1, 78, 95, 96, 98, 101, 104, 105–10, 167, 168, 172, 178, 193– 5, 198–9 Paul of Thebes 26 Pearl 75–86 Penitential handbooks 41 Penitential psalms 35 n.3, 71, 207, 210 Petroff, Elizabeth Alvida 176 Platonism 51–2 Porete, Marguerite (Margaret) 76, 150, 151, 159, 162, 171, 173 Primers 35, 147, 209 Pseudo-Bernardine Meditationes Piissimae (Most Pious Meditations) 67 Pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes 44, 56, 57, 158) Pseudo-Dionysius 53, 76–7, 110 n.46, 159, 207 Richard Rolle 4, 14, 57–8, 63–74, 77, 77, 88, 90, 133, 138, 151, 154, 161, 170, 180, 181 Emendatio Vitae 51 n.3, 71–3 Expositio Super Novem Lectiones Mortuorum 67–70 Form of Living 4, 10, 64, 69 Incendium Amoris 4, 57, 65 n.8, 73, 157, 162 n.17 Meditations on the Passion 70–1, 153 Riddy, Felicity 47, 181 Romuald, St 6 Rufinus 26 Rule of St Augustine 207 Rule of St Benedict 5–6, 29, 37, 135, 207, 209 Saints’ lives 46, 118, 131, 136, see also Hagiography Salter, Elizabeth 75 Sargent, Michael 4 n.5, 7 n.18, 58 n.38, 76 n.3, 87 n.3, 91 n.14, 92 n.22, 95 n.36, 100 Speculum Inclusorum 13, 15 Speculum Peccatoris 67 Spouse 33, 136, 139, 140, 173 See also bride, mystical marriage Stafford, Anne 46 Staley, Lynn 119 Stond wel, moder, under rode 198–9 Suso, Henry 89, 157–174 Swanson, R.N. 41 n.34, 98 n.44, 100 n.54, 122 n.16, 147 Syon Abbey 4, 67, 92, 99, 100, 180, 182 n.29 Via negativa 76, 90, 207, 210 Voaden, Rosalynn 110 n.44, 164 n.25, 183

INDEX Warren, Ann K. 8–9, 11, 16, 19, 31 Watson, Nicholas 4 n.6, 14 n.50, 32, 64 n.6, 66 n.13, 70 n.29, 79, 81, 91, 92, 116, 133, 145 n.1, 151, 165 n.29, 186 n.6 Wilderness 5, 7, 8, 19–33, 131, 196, 197 See also desert Williams, George H. 22–3 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 80

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Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn 133, 134, 158 n.5, 159 n.10 Wooing of Our Lord 17, 133, 150, 151 Wulfric of Haselbury, St 17 Wycliff 47, 48, 63, 89, 91 Wycliffite 47 n.49, 48 n.51, 88, 89, 96, 157, 158 See also Lollardy