Textual Reconstruction: The Deployment of Late Medieval Texts in Early Modern England

TEXTUAL RECONSTRUCTION: THE DEPLOYMENT OF LATE MEDIEVAL TEXTS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND by Melissa Ann Crofton Bachelor of Arts Florida Atlantic University, 1999 Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University, 2002

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2011 Accepted by: Holly Crocker, Major Professor Edward Gieskes, Committee Member Esther Richey, Committee Member Christine Ames, Committee Member Tim Mousseau, Dean of the Graduate School

UMI Number: 3469072

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DEDICATION This project is dedicated to my husband, Jeffrey, and my daughter, Hope Elizabeth. This project would not have been possible without the two of you. I may have sequestered myself away in my office for hours at a time, leaving the two of you to handle whatever chores needed to be done, but I was with you in spirit. I will cherish all the little coos I heard from you downstairs, Hope. Those moments made it possible for me to keep on going, in spite of how hard the task seemed from time to time. Thank you, Jeff, for being there for me when I needed you most, and for giving me space to think when I needed it. You’ve been through this process with me from the very beginning, and I honestly could not have done it without your love and support. I am very, very lucky to have you in my life. Always and forever…

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My idea for this project dates back to one spring day in 2005 when I read Julian of Norwich’s Revelations for a class on British Women Writers. The Revelations was followed by The Book of Margery Kempe. I was hooked—this was the project for me. I am extremely grateful to my entire committee—Holly Crocker, Edward Gieskes, Esther Richey, and Christine Ames. Thank you all for coming together so quickly to read my dissertation and plan my defense. I value your ability to set time aside out of your busy schedules to offer up your expertise. I especially thank my director, Holly Crocker, whose infinite guidance and patience will never be forgotten. I also need to acknowledge my friends and family. There are too many of you to list on one page, but you all know who you are. I will always hold you near and dear to my heart. For those of you I left behind in Florida, know that I’ve missed you each and every day. Ya-Ya! My mantra throughout the entire dissertation-writing process has been from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations—“Alle shalle be wele, and alle madder of things shalle be wele” (Watson 93:61). Indeed it finally seems to have worked out that way, and not a day will go by when I don’t remember that.

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ABSTRACT Textual Reconstruction: The Deployment of Late Medieval Texts in Early Modern England examines the early modern print histories of four late-medieval devotional texts: The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Instead of trying to maintain late medieval and early modern studies as distinct and separate fields, I propose that we gain a better understanding of spirituality when the two periods are united. Early modern readers were interested in these works because the spiritual behavior of the past, and the literature associated with it, were integral the pursuit of a private, interior spirituality. My second chapter starts with the work of Walter Hilton, whose oeuvre represents the most stable example of medieval spirituality discussed in this project. When early printers did alter the Scale, it was to enhance an already broad appeal. I use this stability to explain the differing manifestations of the Revelations, the Book, and the Mirror. My third examines how the medieval scribe’s metamorphosis of Julian’s Revelations proves that the concept of editorial refashioning did not begin with the advent of print, but that it was a tradition carried over from the manuscript era. My fourth chapter discusses the transformation of Margery Kempe’s Book into two sixteenthcentury editions. While current scholarship maintains that these redactions date back to

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the medieval period, I argue in favor of an early modern redactor. In my last chapter I explain how the Mirror was adapted for sixteenth-century audiences using visual cues instead of textual alterations. Unlike the other three texts examined here, the Mirror was printed four times during the early seventeenth century with some very fascinating changes. I demonstrate how England’s break from Rome affected the manner in which these four editions were refashioned for later audiences. The historical divide between the late medieval and early modern periods was not so great that the distance could not be overcome with the transformative power of print. My study concludes that these textual reconstructions signify changing spiritual trends, not deliberate censorship.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION………………………………………………………………………………iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………iv ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………v LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………...…1 CHAPTER II THE INTERIOR WORLD OF HILTON’S SCALE: BEYOND THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFESTYLE………………………………………………………………………..15 CHAPTER III TELLING TALES: THE CONSTRUCTION OF JULIAN’S PERSONA AND TEXT IN HER MEDIEVAL VERSIONS AND SERENUS CRESSY’S 1670 REVELATIONS………….45 CHAPTER IV MARGERY KEMPE, WYNKYN DE WORDE, HENRY PEPWELL, AND THE COUNTERFEIT ANCHORESS OF FLEET STREET……………………………………69 CHAPTER V THE MIRROR OF THE BLESSED LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST: NICHOLAS LOVE AND HIS MIXEDAUDIENCE………………………………………………………….....96 CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………129 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………...137

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LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Title page of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14042.………………………………23 Figure 2.2 Title page of Notary’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14043………………………………24 Figure 2.3 Title page of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14044……………………………….25 Figure 2.4 Title page of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14044……………………………….29 Figure 2.5 Christ on Crucifix, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14044………………………...30 Figure 2.6 Christ’s Life, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14044………………………………31 Figure 3.1 Serenus Cressy’s edition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations………………………...63 Figure 4.1 Wynkyn de Worde’s Shorte Treatyse, STC 14924…………………………………...92 Figure 5.1 Title page of The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, STC 3268……………101 Figure 5.2 Title page of The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus, STC 13034………..103 Figure 5.3 Title page of The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus STC 13035………...103 Figure 5.4 Crucifixion scene, STCs 3259-3261………………………………………………....106 Figure 5.5 Crucifixion scene, STCs 3262-3263…………………………………………………106 Figure 5.6 Crucifixion scene, STCs 3263.5-3266……………………………………………….107 Figure 5.7 Crucifixion scene, STC 3267………………………………………………………..107 Figure 5.8 Presentation of the text, STC 3261…………………………………………………..108

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The Lord began to worke for his Churche, not with sworde and tergate to subdue his exalted aduersarie, but with printyng, writing, and readyng, to conuince darkenesse by lyght, errour by truth, ignoraunce by learning. (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, Book 6, 837) Textual Reconstruction: The Deployment of Late Medieval Texts in Early Modern England examines the fascinating early modern print histories of four late-medieval devotional texts: The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. From the hands of scribal copyists to the black-letter of print, these four treatises reached a diversity of audiences the likes of which their creators would never have imagined. Love was used to chastise religious detractors in both the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, notwithstanding the fact that the entire foundation of orthodoxy had shifted in the meantime. If Love wrote to preserve the Roman Church and remind his readers to “haue inwarde compassion of þat grete & souereyn anguish þat oure lorde Jesus suffrede in þat tyme, & for oure sake,” he was later deployed to shore up protestant devotion (Sargent 163:24-26). In the sixteenth-century adaptation of The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe becomes an anchoress, long after “mech pepyl slawndrydr hir, not leuyng [her

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rapture] was þe werke of God but þat sum euyl spyrit vexid hir in hir body or ellys þat sche had sum bodily sekeness” (Allen 40:6-8). Like Love, Margery is adapted for a completely different devotional purpose than her first audiences would have assumed. Because I show the continued relevance of medieval religious writing, my cross-period approach adds a unique aspect to current scholarship of devotional literature. Instead of trying to maintain late medieval and early modern studies as distinct and separate fields, as most scholars do, I propose that we gain a better understanding of spirituality when manuscripts and their printed variations are read against one another. I challenge these limits by examining how the establishment of Caxton’s printing press in 1476 contributed to the fluidity of medieval texts. Religious texts of the Middle Ages were vital to the initial years of early modern print culture; indeed, “contemporary texts,” or texts written in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, as Lotte Hellinga notes, were a distinct “minority during the first century of printing (Hellinga 89). Textual Reconstruction contends that early modern audiences were interested in their medieval forbearers because the spiritual behavior of the past, and the literature associated with it, were integral aspects to the pursuit of a private, more interior spirituality. This view is in stark contrast to Jacob Burckhardt, who influentially and controversially maintains that the Middle Ages were a time of faith, superstition, and corporate identity: In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness—that which was turned within as that which was turned without—lay dreaming or halfawake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, childlike prejudices, and illusion. (Burckhardt 129, italics mine) Occupying the opposite side of this divide is James Simpson, whose Reform and Cultural

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Revolution seeks to overturn Burckhardt’s harsh critique of the Middle Ages by emphasizing its diversity, variety, and heterogeneity: In the shift from ‘medieval’ to the ‘early modern,’ until at least the middle of the sixteenth century in England, histories of each of these fields could be written within the following contrasts, with the medieval description preceding the early modern: unresolved generic juxtaposition versus attempted generic coherence; complicated accretion versus cleanness of line; development and addition versus conversion; a recognition of historical totality versus a return to originary purity that involves a rejection of large slices of intervening history; consensus versus the intelligence of central command. (Simpson 1-2) Simpson mitigates some of the concerns in Burckhardt’s much-contested argument, but he still views the two periods as distinct. Textual Reconstruction modifes any preconceived notions we may inadvertently disregard about the continuities between the two periods. I pose, and answer, the following question: If medieval and early modern England were so different, how can scholars account for the continued popularity of medieval texts of devotion into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? As I will demonstrate in the course of these next four chapters, the lively print histories of these texts challenge the notion that manuscript and print cultures were radically different. Far from supplanting manuscript culture, the new world of print depended on it. While Alexandra Gillespie has recently demonstrated that literary authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer and John Lydgate enjoyed a central place in early print history, most scholars have long neglected the persistence of medieval religious writing in early modern print culture. Even if The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of jesus Christ are not the texts people think of when they consider Caxton’s innovation, their continued popularity

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reveals that early modern audiences did not view the Middle Ages as a distinct temporality divided from their own unfolding era. Textual Reconstruction will establish that early modern attempts to construct a relationship with the literary past enabled sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers to view themselves in relation to a constant religious tradition. This project explains how the process of revision allowed early modern editors to emphasize the continuities between medieval and contemporary religiosity and, concurrently, soften any tensions between the two eras. In her seminal book, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern England, Elizabeth Eisenstein claims, Every manuscript that came into the printer’s hands […] had to be reviewed in a new way—one which encouraged more editing, correcting, and collating than had the hand-copied text. Within a generation the results of this review were being aimed in a new direction—away from fidelity to scribal conventions and toward serving the convenience of a reader. (Eisenstein 24) Certainly, texts are adapted for different purposes across changing religious climes, and a comparison between the printed editions and their manuscript antecedents demonstrates the great effort it took to resurrect The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.1 These texts are not obvious choices for later audiences since the presentation of medieval religiosity is vastly different from text to text. However, the main commonality that the works of Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and Nicholas Love share is that all seek to empower the readers of their texts through the development of a private, more interior spirituality. When texts stray outside the boundaries of this

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Hereafter referred to as the Scale, the Revelations, the Book, and the Mirror. Any reference to the Scale in this introduction will refer to both books, Scale I and Scale II, but in my chapter on Hilton I will differentiate between the two.

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common characteristic, I will analyze how early modern editors adapted them to become more didactic in focus. If a medieval text did not promote the inward, meditative devotion favored by later audiences, printers changed those texts—usually by expunging objectionable material—to emphasize the features of private devotion their audiences practiced in their everyday worship. All four of these treatises circulated at one time or another between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, with textual reconstructions that range from the minimal to the extreme. Editorial interference manifests itself in very specific ways—through the addition of woodcut images; the excision of objectionable and, perhaps, antiquated subject matter; the inclusion of explanatory glosses; and, as I will show in the work of Margery Kempe, through the deliberate regulation of her gender. The ramifications of such editorial interventions are two-fold: not only do these modifications affect the texts’ meaning, but they also offer a way to think about early modern spirituality on the eve of the Reformation and beyond. Textual Reconstruction demonstrates how each of these alterations reflects a cautious awareness of religious and sociopolitical values, especially since these early modern editions catered to widely diverse audiences of different times and places. Seventeenth-century editions of the Mirror, for instance, emphasize the tragic plight of Catholicism after England’s break with Rome. Other texts seem more appropriate for one cultural moment, but their portability is diminished across generational divides for various reasons. My project will discuss both kinds of texts, and it will consider aspects of medieval religion that early modern printers deployed for these changing audiences. At any given moment in history, devotional literature entails a significant amount of danger— authors, readers and, for that matter, any person who

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contributed to the circulation of these texts, might be subject to punishment for the production or circulation of unorthodox religious material. The stakes are thus very high in the business of printing, especially devotional literature. Early modern printers not only needed to figure out what would sell, but also what would be allowed by officials. While the nascent years of the printing press show little monarchical concern for its regulation, legislation was enacted in 1484, 1515, and 1523; however, the primary focus of these acts was to regulate the conditions under which foreign printers could function.2 After 1523 the Crown’s attention was directed toward preventing the circulation and importation of controversial works. Nearly a century may have passed since the 1401 enactment of De heretico comburendo and Archbishop Arundel’s 1409 Constitutions, but the boundaries of orthodoxy were equally complex during the early modern period. The Lollard movement spawned by John Wycliffe’s teachings continued to flourish among the laity, and “from about the year 1490 we hear with ever-increasing frequency of Lollard heretics and of official acts to obliterate the sect” (Dickens 46). Religious opposition surfaced from outside Henry VIII’s realm, as well. By the 1520s the continental beliefs of Zwingli, Luther, and Tyndale began to find favor among dissidents, gathering more influence after the appearance of Tyndale’s 1526 translation of the New Testament into the vernacular. Consequently, printing and selling books in the early modern era became just as dangerous as the transmission of heterodox manuscripts under Arundel’s watchful eye in the early fifteenth century.3 In 1524 Wynkyn de Worde, one of 2

The Act of 1484 “allowed complete freedom to printers, binders and scriveners to practice their trade” (Bennett 30). Subsequent acts tightened the noose as foreigners were more actively policed by what they could and could not do. In the year 1500, Colin Clair notes that “there were only five printers in London, [but] by 1523 there were thirty-three or more printers and booksellers” (Clair 105). 3

Although many scholars currently argue against Nicholas Watson’s argument concerning vernacular theology, Arundel’s lasting presence cannot be overlooked. According to Watson, “the Constitutions were

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the most influential printers of the early sixteenth century, found himself in trouble for printing the allegedly heretical Image of Love. Cuthbert Tunstall, the Bishop of London, was lenient with de Worde’s penalty, warning him “not to sell any more, and to get back what [he] had already sold” (Plomer 94).4 The stage had thus been set for the enactment of stricter regulations as more controversial works of literature circulated throughout Henry VIII’s reign. In his 1532 Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, Thomas More claims, A longe work wold yt be to reherse to you all theyr [the heretics’] bokes, for there be yet mo then I know. Agaynste all whyche the kynges high wysedome polytyquely prouyded, in that his hyghnes by his proclamacions forbode any maner englysh bokes prented byionde [the] see to be brought into this realme, or any to be solde prented within ths realme, but yf the name of the prenter and his dwellynge place were sette vppon the boke. (Schuster 11: 29-35, italics mine) Perhaps channeling the spirit of Arundel’s 1409 Constitutions, the King “declared that nothing was to be printed until it had been examined and licensed by the Privy Council or its agents” in 1538 (Bennett 36). The penalty for any transgression was a death sentence for both authors and printers alike. In 1533—five years prior to this proclamation— Elizabeth Barton and the men responsible for printing and circulating her Nun’s Book were hanged.5 Notwithstanding this dangerous environment, early printers continued to produce and circulate medieval religious writings, showing the importance of such materials to the growing culture of print in Tudor England.

notorious for well over a century, taking a prominent role in Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue Concerning Heresies (written in the 1520s)” (Watson 830). A recent book, Writing Religious Women: Female Spirituality and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, suggests that Watson’s term is in need of updating. Denis Renevy claims that vernacular theology should be further sub-categorized to include “female vernacular theology.” 4

Plomer notes that there are but “two copies of the Image of Love now known, one at Stonyhurst College and the other in Trinity College, Cambridge” (Plomer 94). 5

For more information regarding this case see E.J. Devereux’s “Elizabeth Barton and Tudor Censorship.”

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In order to analyze the culture in which the Scale, the Revelations, the Book, and the Mirror were reproduced, I will consider the following set of questions in each of my four chapters: When were the texts first printed? How frequently? By whom? What did these manifestations look like? And, perhaps more importantly, what do these alterations say about the religious preferences of later audiences? The inward, devotional practices of these particular texts lend themselves to adaptation, and all but one was printed by de Worde, two of them with great regularity. The appearance of newer, updated editions oftentimes demonstrates a desire to meet the needs of the buyer, but I will argue that this inconsistency cannot merely be attributed to a problem of supply and demand. Instead, I contend that gender and religious orthodoxy function as regulatory principles in later manifestations of a text. Although the practice of editorial refashioning was enacted regardless of an author’s gender, the extent of these changes shows a glaring disparity between male and female authored texts. Of the four texts I examine in this study, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection represents the most stable example of medieval spirituality to endure well into the seventeenth century. I discuss his works first in this study because I will use this stability to explain the differing manifestations of the Revelations, the Book, and the Mirror. Printed a total of six times between 1494 and 1659, the Scale offers all readers a connection to the divine: Grace openeth the goostli iye, and clereth the wit of the soule wondirli above the freelté of corrupt kynde. It geveth the soule a newe ablenesse, whethir it wole reden Holi Writ or heeren or thenken it, for to undirstonde truli and savourli the sothfastnesse of it in the manere bifore seid, and for to turnen redili alle resones and wordes that aren bodili seid into goostely undirstondynge. (Bestul, Scale II, 3346-50)

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De Worde’s name becomes inextricably bound to Hilton’s oeuvre when he signs his name on the title-page to his 1494 edition of the Scale. Only one other printer, Julian Notary, would release the Scale during de Worde’s lifetime, but not until 1507. De Worde does not counter with another reprinting, and more than a decade would come to pass before anyone else focused his attention on the works of Hilton. Perhaps more important than this act of ownership is the fact that de Worde appends a copy of Hilton’s lesser known, though still influential treatise, the Mixed Life, to his edition of 1494. Consequently, the Mixed Life becomes overwhelmingly known and marketed as the third installment of the Scale—a trend that would continue throughout the seventeenth century. As I will show, the temporal and textual continuity of this text provides the model of medieval devotional materials that early modern printers sought to emulate: the personal, divinely guided, interior spirituality is what all medieval texts under consideration in this study are designed to promote. On the other hand, early modern printers displayed a lot more caution when it came to the works of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Chapter three, “Telling Tales,” explains how the potential hazard of printing Julian’s work can be linked to the manner in which medieval scribes handled her earlier, shorter version, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman, and the longer, more theologically complex Revelations. Whereas the manuscripts of both Hilton and Love combined are extant in over one hundred and forty copies, Julian’s texts only survive in five manuscripts.6 BL Additional MS 37790 contains A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman, but it is packaged amongst the works of Richard Rolle, Jan van Ruysbroeck, Henry Suso, and Walter Hilton. Since Julian’s

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Lagorio and Sargent list forty-eight manuscripts of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. Nicholas Love’s Mirror is even more popular, with “more than a hundred manuscripts” in existence (Sargent x).

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frequent apologies for being “a woman, lewed, febille, and freylle” show great concern with Pauline doctrine, I contend that this spiritual anthology tries to standardize her visions with the advice of superiors (Watson 75:36-37). Likewise, Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4 is a spiritual anthology, but its scribe chose to include the version that modern readers are more familiar with, the Revelations. In spite of the scribe’s preference for the longer text, though, he drastically condenses it, much like later printers would do to the Book of Margery Kempe. In this chapter I will use the scribe’s metamorphosis of the Revelations to demonstrate that the concept of editorial refashioning is not an invention of print, but that it was being used in the manuscript era. The last three remaining treatises are late sixteenth- early eighteenth-century copies of the Revelations, and are unabridged; nevertheless, sixteenth-century printers disregarded the Revelations. If they did in fact circulate the text, then no evidence remains. Sixteenth-century readers may not have been familiar with the wisdom of Julian of Norwich, but the text would be printed for late seventeenth-century readers. In 1670 the Benedictine, Serenus Cressy, printed the Revelations for the spiritual advisement of Lady Mary Blount, and “Telling Tales” will conclude with a discussion of this faithful reproduction, particularly as it relates to earlier scribal adaptations of Julian’s religious writings. Extant manuscripts are even rarer for the Book of Margery Kempe, but in this case, the manuscript evidence shows how drastically printers altered medieval religious texts when circulating them for new audiences. BL Addit 61823 is the only complete manuscript; however, my fourth chapter, “Margery Kempe, Wynkyn de Worde, Henry Pepwell, and the Counterfeit Anchoress of Fleet Street” discusses how Kempe gained a sixteenth-century audience that Julian never encountered. Two editions of Kempe’s Book

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went to print: one was released by Wynkyn de Worde in 1501 and the other by Henry Pepwell in 1521. The fact that Margery’s treatise was printed in lieu of Julian’s is very intriguing, especially when we compare the differences in their lives. Unlike Julian, who was an anchoress, Margery Kempe lived in the public sphere, and her Book sensationalizes a form of spirituality that many of her contemporaries felt was transgressive. When traveling through the town of Leicester, the mayor imprisons her after calling her “a fals strumpet, a fals loller, & a fals deceyuer of þe pepyl” (Allen 112:1-2). While current scholarship maintains that the Shorte Treatyse was based on a text compiled by one of Margery’s contemporaries, chapter four argues that the overwhelmingly didactic focus points to an early modern redactor. The Shorte Treatyse, as de Worde titles it, eliminates all mystical elements of the treatise and promotes a domesticated spirituality in its stead. Henry Pepwell takes the enhancement of Margery’s persona a step further when he designates her as an “Ancress of Lynn.” By making the role of an anchoress fulfill an early modern fantasy of female spirituality—a fantasy, it is worth emphasizing, that had little to do with the life and writings of an actual anchoress, such as Julian of Norwich—it becomes clear that early modern versions of medieval texts reflect a desire for historical continuity in religious devotion. My fifth chapter, “The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: Nicholas Love and His Mixed Audience,” explains how the Mirror shares a print history as equally rich as the Scale. De Worde’s predecessor, William Caxton, may not have printed Hilton’s work, but he did issue two editions of Love’s Mirror—one in 1484 and other in 1490. After Caxton’s death, de Worde and his rival, Richard Pynson, “ventured forward slowly” in their newly-inherited trade, though de Worde’s productivity far outweighs that

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of his rival (Bennett 182).7 By 1494 both printers had released a copy of the Mirror, with another succession of dueling imprints in 1506-07. Whereas the addition of Hilton’s Mixed Life to the end of the Scale can best be described as a textual alteration, I will show that Love’s text was adapted for later audiences using visual cues more than textual alterations. Most printers engaged in a number of techniques to increase the salability of their wares, and the majority of these changes were made in the form of “title-pages, […] ornamental borders, printers’ ornaments, or woodcuts” (Bennett 215). This is definitely the case with the Mirror—the first four editions of the Mirror have over twenty woodcut images compared to the Scale’s one.8 Perhaps de Worde and Pynson were following in Caxton’s footsteps since his 1484 imprint included a total of twenty-five woodcut illustrations. While medieval texts of spiritual devotion were integral for early sixteenthcentury readers, England’s break with Rome had an adverse effect on the materials I will treat in this project. Henry VIII’s reformist pursuits were growing more intense with each passing year, and the overtly Catholic qualities of the Scale, the Shorte Treatys, and the Mirror were not compatible with the changing religious clime. The quick successions of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I did little to ease the topsy-turvy nature of religious orthodoxy in the middle years of the sixteenth-century. Margery’s Kempe’s Shorte Treatyse disappears into near oblivion, but the seventeenth century saw the return of Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love, and the first imprint of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations.

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Bennett notes that “between 1492 and 1532 [de Worde’s] imprint appears on over 700 works” (Bennett 190). 8

A little clarification is warranted here. The first three Scale editions only included a woodcut image on the title-page. In 1525, though, Hilton adorns the Scale with a total of three woodcuts. This will be discussed in greater detail in the Hilton chapter.

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Hilton was printed twice in the middle half of the seventeenth century, and both were faithful reproductions. In 1653, Edward Stanley released an edition of the Mixed Life. Six years later, in 1659, a printer only identified as T.R, printed the Scale, complete with the Mixed Life. On the other hand, Nicholas Love’s Mirror went to print three times during the seventeenth century, and with some very fascinating changes. I will argue how the religious milieu affected how it’s two printers—Charles Boscard and John Heigham— handled their commissions. Catholic readers were still eager for books that upheld the faith, and Boscard and Heigham made sure their readers received what they needed. In catering to the unique needs of their readers, the two printers engage the Mirror in a series of transformations that dramatically affect its historicity. Authorship of the Mirror is attributed to Bonaventure—a misattribution that essentially dates back to Love. In his proheme, Love acknowledges that the Mirror is a translation of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, and he cites its author as “the venerable doctor Bonaventure” (Sargent xxx, 1992 Scale edition). Boscard and Heigham are merely following Love’s lead, but their expurgation of the Arundelian approbatio and the Treatise on the Sacrament are more deliberate. However, I claim that these augmentations do not distort the spirit of the Mirror as much as they help foster a relationship with a new audience. As I will establish throughout the course of the next four chapters, early modern printers left an indelible mark on The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. The historical divide between the late medieval and early modern periods was not so great that the distance could not be overcome with the transformative power of print. I

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pay close attention to the relationship played out between the author, printer, and reader on the page of the texts, and while the textual reconstructions of these treatises are very different, they signify changing spiritual trends and not deliberate censorship. Roger Chartier notes, “the vast labor of adaptation—shortening texts, simplifying them, cutting them up, providing illustrations—was commanded by how the bookseller-publishers who specialized in the market envisioned their customers’ abilities and expectations,” and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printers engaged in all of these actions (Chartier 13). No matter how great the extent of these manifestations, and no matter how frequently a text did or did not go to print, all four writers—Hilton, Julian, Margery, and Love—offer a unique perspective on how to nurture an interior meditative practice.

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CHAPTER II THE INTERIOR WORLD OF HILTON’S SCALE: BEYOND THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFESTYLE Menes þere ben in þe whiche a contemplative prentys schuld be ocupyd, þe whiche ben þees; Lesson, Meditacion, & Oryson. Or elles to þin vnderstondyng þei mowe be clepid: Redyng, Þinkyng, & Preiing. Of þeese þre þou schalt fynde wretyn in anoþer book of anoþer mans werk moche betyr þen I can telle þee; & þerfore it nedeþ not here to telle þee of þe qualitees of hem. Bot þis I may telle þee: þeese þre ben so couplid to-gedir, þat vnto hem þat ben biginners & profiteers—bot not to hem þat be parfite, 1e, as it may be here—þinkyng may not goodly be getyn wiþ-outyn redyng or heryng coming before. (The Cloud of Unknowing, 1350-1400, 71:11-20) The Cloud author’s acknowledgement of “a book written by someone else” is believed by many critics to be the work of Walter Hilton, whose treatises move away from the performative, histrionic devotion for which the medieval texts of spiritual devotion are often known. Hilton’s Scale of Perfection—composed of two separate books—and the Mixed Life promote a more disciplined form of meditative interiority that was essential to both medieval and early modern audiences.9 Helen Gardner suggests that

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According to Lagorio and Sargent, there are “eighteen [manuscripts] containing Book I [of the Scale] alone, three containing Book II alone, 21 containing both books, and six sets of extracts” (Lagorio and Sargent 3075).

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Scale I and II “should be regarded more as two separate works than as two parts of the same book,” but Hilton’s constant references to “the firste partie of this writynge” in Scale II indicate that he viewed his expansion as a companion piece to its predecessor (H. Gardner, 115; Bestul, Scale II: 1005). Initially, Scale I was written to provide religious guidance for a woman who had recently entered an anchorhold, but in Scale II the intimacy between an anchoress and her spiritual advisor is broadened to welcome new readers. Vernacular spirituality was hotly contested in the late fourteenth century, but Hilton’s move toward a more diverse readership suggests he viewed the genre of spiritual advice as one suitable for lay consumption, as his Mixed Life attests. Hilton’s willingness to include the laity in his spiritual vision is further substantiated by his later spiritual treatise, the Mixed Life. Despite the fact that “only three manuscripts attribute” the Mixed Life to Hilton, his authorship is accepted on the basis that “doctrinally it echoes or complements much of the Scale’s teaching;” indeed, these striking similarites have led Thomas Bestul to characterize the treatise as a “’lite’ version of the Scale” (OgilvieThomson viii; Bestul 99).10 Hilton’s response to spiritual demands by lay audiences can best be described as an institutionalized interiority, and this methodology is extremely important to the later reprintability of his work. Compared to the other three treatises I discuss in this project, Hilton’s print history is rather undramatic. Although minimal alterations are made to his work, this in itself emphasizes the importance of the inward, didactic spirituality that he develops in the Scale and the Mixed Life. Because Hilton’s writings formulate an inward spirituality that is at once individual and institutional, the Scale and the Mixed Life transcend the quill and vellum

10

There are nineteen remaining copies of the Mixed Life in manuscript format.

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of the medieval scribe, becoming widely popular following the advent of print. In all, there are seven printed editions of the Scale of Perfection, ranging in dates from 1494 to 1659. By far, Wynkyn de Worde is the most regular printer of the text, with four editions released between 1494 and 1533.11 The only other sixteenth-century printer of the Scale is Julian Notary, and his edition, STC 14043, is derived from de Worde’s.12 That the Scale continued to thrive by finding willing printers and avid readers nearly three hundred years after its initial composition is certainly a characteristic worthy of scholarly attention, particularly when we consider the appearance of these later editions in relation to their medieval counterparts. Texts do not always maintain their integrity upon the transition from manuscript to print, and while Walter Hilton’s ouevre is transformed by early modern printers, his work endured significantly less editorial intervention than Margery Kempe’s Book and Nicholas Love’s Mirror. Of the seven early modern printings of the Mixed Life, five of them are appended to the Scale (Lagorio and Sargent 3076).13 Of the remaining two versions, one was incorporated at the end of Richard Pynson’s 1516 edition of the Kalendre of the Newe Legende of Englande. Although early modern printers rarely justified their editorial decisions, Pynson’s prologue explains his intent for including the Mixed Life at the end of the Kalendre: In the latter ende of this boke is a lytell draught of May1ter water Hylt2 of the medled lyfe 1hewynge howe and by whome it 1hulde be vsed a though it haue ben Imprynted before this tyme yet take it charytably for the more a good thynge is knowen the better it is and parcase by this occa2yon it may come to the knowlege of 2ome men that otherwy2e 2hulde neuer haue harde 2peke of it. (STC 4602, Aiv.v, italics mine) 11

His editions are listed as follows: STC 14042, printed in 1494; STC 14043.5, printed in 1519; STC 14044, printed in 1525; and STC 14045, printed in 1533. 12

Notary’s edition is printed in 1507.

13

STCs 14042-14045 and Wing 3882.

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Robert Wyre’s Mixed Life, STC 14041 circa 1530/31, is the only edition to survive entirely on its own, comfortably situated between de Worde’s 1525 and 1533 editions of the Scale and Mixed Life. The advantage to Wyre’s printing is that it offers practical advice without the theological sophistication found in the Scale. Plus, at only forty-eight pages in its entirety, the text would have been significantly cheaper for the printer to print in octavo format, and short enough for the reader to consume in one sitting. While manuscript history demonstrates that the combination of a single author’s work into one volume was a conventional practice, when Wynkyn de Worde includes the Mixed Life in his 1494 edition it becomes overwhelmingly known and marketed as a third installment to the Scale. No longer the entitlement of anchoresses, wealthy landowners, or members of the clerical elite, a complete guide of spiritual devotion was available to anyone willing to “meedele þe wekes of actif liyf wiþ goostli werkes of lif conte[m]platif” (Ogilvie-Thomson 10:101-2).14 Scholars can use this example of textual refashioning to trace changes in spirituality, and this chapter explains how Hilton’s institutional interiority makes his texts easily transportable to later readers and, more importantly, less likely to be tampered with by later editors. In the rare instances where early printers did alter a Hilton text, I will demonstrate it was to enhance its already broad appeal. Wynkyn de Worde’s inaugural edition of 1494 is significant, as Henry Plomer maintains, on several counts. First and foremost, it is the very first text that de Worde signed his name to after taking over Caxton’s printing press. Even more important,

14

Any line quoted from Mixed Life will be identified by page number followed by line number.

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though, is the fact that this text went to print at the request of the king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort. The dedication of the edition, along with de Worde’s claim of responsibility, is worth printing here in its entirety, for it reveals a wealth of information about the production of the edition and its royal patroness: Infynyte laud, with thankynges many folde, I yielde to God, me socourynge with his grace This boke to fynyshe, which that ye beholde. Scale of perfection calde in every place; Whereof thauctor Walter Hylton was, And Wynkyn de Worde, this hath sette in printe In William Caxton’s hows so fyll the case, God rest his soul, in joy ther mot is stynt. This heauenly boke, more precious than golde Was late dyrect, with great humylyte, For godly plesur, theron to beholde Unto the right noble Margaret, as ye see, The Kynges moder, of excellent bounte, Herry the seventh, that Jhu him preserve, This Myghte princesse hath commanded me Temprynt this boke, her grace for to deserue. (Plomer 52, italics mine) Plomer attributes the short verse to Robert Copland, “a literary helper,” employed by de Worde, “who was not only trained in the craftsmanship of a printer, but was a man of good education and wide reading, who on more than one occasion supplied metrical prologues and epilogues to books printed by Wynkyn de Worde” (Plomer 52-53). The poem, regardless of who its author may have been, accomplishes several key tasks. De Worde announces himself as a worthy successor to Caxton’s printing enterprise, and he implies a sense of ownership in printing Hilton’s text. De Worde’s name also becomes inextricably bound with that of Lady Margaret Beaufort’s, and soon after the appearance of Hilton’s Scale, de Worde would “style himself ‘Prynter unto the moost excellent pryncesse my lady the kynges moder’” (Croft 3).

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Another intriguing characteristics of early printed Scale editions is the lack of what Plomer purports to be one of de Worde’s favorite features—woodcut images. There are certainly numerous reasons why early printers illustrated their texts, but one of the primary functions of a woodcut is that it “plays a central role in the movement from lay ignorance to lay literacy” (Driver 229). In all but one of his Scale editions, de Worde incorporates only one woodcut; as such, de Worde does not promote the image-driven conception of piety that he employs in his editions of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to determine the precise impact these unadorned treatises may have had on the individual reader, but this relative lack of illustration must have presented a considerable degree of difficulty for the average reader who did not possess a high level of literacy.15 Nevertheless, the Scale’s extensive print history indicates that whatever the obstacle, nothing would stand in the way of a reader’s desire to whet his spiritual inquisitiveness. What, then, does this lack of decoration reveal about the work of the author and the printers who made these medieval treatises available to early modern audiences? For the most part, de Worde’s lack of decoration helps facilitate the advanced level of interiority imperative to the Scale’s spiritual purpose. The desire for more spiritual autonomy was in its early stages during the late Middle Ages, gaining momentum with each passing year. Excepting Nicholas Love’s Mirror, Hilton fosters a strong, inwardly-focused spirituality that only appears in the texts of a very few of his

15

In my later chapter, “Nicholas Love and His Mixed Audience,” I will demonstrate how the use of woodcut images helped lead “lewyd,” i.e., less learned, readers through the pages of the text.

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contemporaries.16 Although his predilection to endorse a mixed way of life is not fully embraced until Scale II, Hilton’s association with the Augustinians, an order “founded expressly to combine the best elements of the cloistered life and active ministry,” may have provided the impetus to open the cloistered doors to those “leryd or lewyd, temporal or spiritual; and generali alle worldli men” (Bestul 94; Bestul, Scale I: 31-2).17 Hilton’s spiritual regimen is didactic in focus, and he has harsh words for those who place too much confidence in external appearances and neglect the inner soul: A bodili turnynge to God without the herte folwynge is but a figure or a likenes of vertues and no soothfastnesse. Wherfore a wrecchid man or a woman is he or sche that leveth al the inward kepinge of hymself and schapith hym withoute oonli a fourme and likenes of hoolynesse. (Bestul, Scale I: 8-12, italics mine)18 This level of interiority is empowering for both late medieval and early modern audiences alike, though it is not one to be undertaken by the faint of heart. In order to begin the process of spiritual healing, Hilton directs the reader to “entre into himsilf, for to knowe his owen soule and the myghtes therof, the fairenesse and the foulenesse therof” (Bestul, Scale I: 1107-08, italics mine). While the trope of unworthiness is often employed by religious writers, Hilton’s ability to combine personal reflection with spiritual guidance speaks to the immediacy of any reader of the Scale, no matter what day and age. In an 16

Julian of Norwich’s Revelations, though written by a female, is also a highly introspective treatise. This exploratory treatise was not printed during the early modern period, and represents the challenge the Revelations poses even, as Hugh Kempster suggests, after being refashioned for different audiences. This topic will be discussed in great detail in the following chapter.

17

Though this is merely a conjecture, it is possible that Hilton’s change in audience may have occurred as a result of writing the Mixed Life. The dating of Hilton’s work is by no means conclusive, but it is certainly within reason that the Mixed Life may have inspired Hilton to envision this wider audience. S.S. Hussey discusses the dating of Hilton’s work in his article “From Scale I to Scale II.” He does not provide any lengthy argument about the dating of Mixd Life, but he suggests, at one point, that “Mixed Life preceded Scale II and perhaps even Scale I” (Hussey 63). 18

All citations from The Scale of Perfection are from Thomas Bestul’s edition published in 2000. Citations will identify the line number from the TEAMS website.

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attempt to uphold the reflexiveness advocated in the Scale, Hilton turns the lens of this inward reflection on himself: I feele me so wrecchid, and so freel, and so fleischli, and so fer fro the trewe feelynge fro that that I speke and have spoke, that y ne can not ellis but crie merci, and desire after as y may with hope that oure Lord wol brynge me therto of His grace in the blisse of hevene. (Bestul, Scale I: 385-88) Such humble disclosures make the treatise more personal, and if Hilton expects readers to assess their own self-worth, it is only fair for him to embrace those same principles. Consequently, Hilton assumes the role of a companion in the quest for spiritual enlightenment, much like Nicholas Love does in the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ as I discuss in chapter five. The ornamental simplicity of early modern Scale printings reflects the careful manner in which de Worde approached his commission. De Worde may have been a fledgling printer, but his faithful reproductions maintain the level of austerity demanded by the Scale. No woodcut image could convey the importance of Hilton’s message, and de Worde simply follows the manuscript tradition of allowing words, not pictures, to entice the devout to lead a contemplative lifestyle. Yet de Worde was also looking to mark his arrival in the world of print, and because spiritual treatises are oftentimes enhanced by visual imagery, he includes one of the most iconic representations of Christianity in his first Scale edition—the Virgin Mary suckling an infant Christ.

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Figure 2.1: Title page of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14042

As mentioned previously, de Worde was the only printer of the Scale until Julian Notary published an edition in 1507. Notary was not adventurous with his edition and closely followed de Worde’s initial craftsmanship. Only one woodcut decorates the pages of the text, and it is very similar to the image used by de Worde of the Virgin Mary and her infant son:

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Figure 2.2: Title page of Notary’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14043.

Apparently, de Worde was not threatened by his competitor, for Notary’s edition remains the last Scale reprint until 1519.19 The year 1525, though, marks a deviation from the treatise’s relative stability. In STC 14044, de Worde changes his title-page woodcut image to focus on the death, rather than the nativity of Christ:20

19

This edition is STC 14043.5. It is not on EEBO and I have not been able to view a copy of this edition to compare any differences with the other two STCs.

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Figure 2.3: Title page of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14044

While not entirely out of context, the woodcut seems out of place in a text that minimizes the role of the Passion in one’s meditative practices. Audiences familiar with the Book of Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich’s Revelations, and Richard Rolle’s Incendium Amoris and Meditationes will notice how much Hilton’s portrayal of the Passion deviates from the fantastical imaginings found in the works of these medieval writers.21 As an exercise

20

Printers notoriously reused woodcut images for different texts; however, this same image is found in BL Egerton 1821, a late fifteenth-century collection of devotional texts. 21

All four of these texts fall within different parameters of the affective piety movement. Kempe’s book is a biographical account of her life, Julian of Norwich’s is a tale of a near-death experience, the result of which led her to meditate on the visions she received for a great number of years. Rolle’s texts provide

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in devotion, affective piety compels the devout to “focus on the humanity and suffering of Christ,” which is primarily accomplished through elaborate meditations on the Passion (LaVert 73). Whereas Rolle’s treatises predate the work of Hilton, and Kempe’s follows nearly forty years after, they frame Hilton’s work well within the influence of affective piety; nevertheless, the Scale gravitates away from this distinctly medieval movement. Only two chapters are devoted to a discussion of the Passion in Scale I, and they are very brief. Hilton merely cites the gospel of St. Paul to encourage the reader’s attention to the Passion, and provides no details of the bleeding body of Christ: Nichil iudicavi me scire inter vos, nisi Jesum Christum, et hunc crucifixum (1 Corinthians 2:2). I schewed yow right nought that y couthe, but oonli Jhesu Crist and Him crucified. As yif he had seid: My knowynge and my trust is oonli in the passioun of Crist. (Bestul, Scale I, 925-28) However, Hilton was well aware of the fact that his “introspective detachment” from the Passion “would not satisfy the aspirations of many ordinary people whose religious impulses were extroverted and manifested in either the worship of images and relics or in physical and supernatural experiences” (Hughes 284). Hilton provides a Passion narrative in both volumes of the Scale of Perfection but, as the previous passage indicates, he does not lapse into descriptions filled with blood and elaborate tales of suffering, which oftentimes leads those with good intentions to “fallen into fantasies and singulere conceites, or into open errours” (Bestul, Scale I, 723-24). As Hilton refigures affective piety he is simultaneously forced to contend with the works of Richard Rolle, a religious recluse whose teachings appeared in the 1340s and

examples of Passion meditations. All three of these authors will be discussed in greater detail throughout the course of this project.

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quickly gained popularity among the laity.22 Criticism is directed toward the visionary spectacle that Rolle emphasizes in his Meditations on the Passion. The following passage demonstrates how Rolle invites all readers to mimic horror at the violence of Christ’s torture: me þynketh, lord, I se how þey led þe forth naked as a worme, turmentours about þe and armed kneghtes. Þe prese of þe peple was wondyr mych; þey harried þe shamfully, and spurned þe with har fete as þou haddist be a dogge. A, þis is a reuthful sy3t: þy hede is ful of þornes, þy here ful of blode, þy face is al wan, þy lokynge is mournynge, þy chekes and hede al bolned with buffetys, þy visage is defowled with spittynge. Þe Iewes haue so besene þe þat þou art lyker a mysel þan a clene man. (Ogilvie-Thomson, Meditation B, 308-15) The ocular grotesques of Rolles Meditations creates such a frenzy of emotions that even the narrator admits, I fynd no swetnesse [in envisioning the Passion], bot spek as a iay, and nat wot what I mene. I stody in passioun, and fynd no tast, for my synnys bene so many and so dym þat þey haue shot out deuocioun and stopped al þe sauour of swetnesse fro my soule, and þerfore I speke and blondre forth as a blynd man, and spek without wisdome and connynge of so deuout matier. (Ogilvie-Thomson, Meditation B, 387-92) This stands in direct opposition to the temperance of Hilton, whose depiction is designed to foster compassion in the mind of the reader, though he does not explicitly condemn Rolle’s teachings: Whanne it is so that thou art stired to devocion, and sodeynli thi thought is drawen up from alle worldli and fleischli thinges, and thee thenketh as thu 22

Most of Rolle’s earlier works were written in Latin, such as Incendium Amoris, Contra Amatores Mundi, and Emendatio Vitae. The Incendium and Emendatio were subsequently translated into Middle English by Richard Misyn, a Carmelite deacon, who later became a hermit in the 1430s. It was not until later in his career as a hermit that Rolle began to write in the vernacular, addressing a significant corpus of work to women solitaries. One of his most well-known treatises, The Form of Living, was written for Margaret Kirkeby, an anchoress who was “healed” by Rolle after suffering an incapacitating seizure. Indeed, Rolle’s association with miracles led to the development of a Rollean cult, which “seems to have begun in the 1380s,” nearly thirty years after Rolle’s death (Allen, Rosamund 11). Coincidentally, the 1380s was a decade in which the writings of Hilton were starting to gain popularity. There are roughly forty-seven MSS of the Form of Living in existence. The Fire of Love, another popular treatise, is only found in three MSS. Rolle’s Meditations on the Passion is found in nine MSS.

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seighe in thi soule thi Lord Jhesu Crist in bodili liknesse as He was in erthe, how He was taken of the Jewes and bounden as a theef, beten and dispisid, scourgid and demed to the deeth; hou mekeli He baar the Cros upon his bak, and hou crueli He was nailed therupon; also of the crowne of thornes upon His heed, and upon the scharp spere that stonge Him to the herte. And thou in this goostli sight thou felist thyn herte stired into so greet compassioun and pité of thi Lord Jhesu that thou mornest, and wepist, and criest with alle thy myghtes of thi bodi and of thi soule, wondrynge the goodnesse and the love, the pacience and the mekenesse of oure Lord Jhesu, that He wolde for so synful a caitif as thou art suffre so mykil peyne. And also over this thou felist so mykil goodnesse and merci in oure Lord that thi herte riseth up into love and glaadnesse of Him with manye swete teeris, havynge greet trust of forgyvenesse of thi synnes and of savacioun of thi soule bi the vertu of this precious passioun. (Bestul, Scale I, 901-15, italics mine) The inherent violence of Christ’s death is not warranted in the cultivation of Hilton’s mystical union with God, but rather, Hilton recommends quiet, disciplined contemplation. While the Passion is given limited exposure in Scale I, it receives even less attention in book two. Here, Hilton’s pastoral duty is to stress the salvific power of the Passion which, as he so poignantly states, enables the reformation of the soul: “This passioun of oure Lord and this precious deeth is the ground of al the reformynge of mannes soule, withouten whiche might nevere mannys soule have be reformed to the liknes of Him, ne come to the blisse of hevene” (Bestul, Scale II, 84-6, italics mine). Thus, the ensuing chapters of Scale II provide the framework to develop an inward, private model of spirituality outside the influence of affective piety. What, then, was de Worde thinking when he changed the opening woodcut image of his 1525 edition of the Scale? Henry Plomer is pessimistic about de Worde’s skill as an artisan, stating that de Worde did not “trouble himself as to whether the blocks or ornaments he used were suitable to the type of book he was printing. Anything that happened to be on the shelves at the time was inserted” (Plomer 61). While it is not

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within the scope of this study to critique de Worde’s craftsmanship as Plomer does, there is a plausible explanation for this change—the fixed nature of the Scale’s print history. For the previous three decades, there were only three other editions in existence. The similarities of these texts may have been too overwhelming, perhaps, to tempt the eyes of new purchasers, and de Worde may have been trying to increase his book sales. His edition looked different than prior imprints. Moreover, Passion meditations were still en vogue and, as previously discussed, Hilton promotes them as a way to reform the soul, however subtly. I include a partial image one more time here so I may reference one more important detail:

Figure 2.4: Title page of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, STC 14044

The adage—“The greatest comfort in al temptacyon is the rem4braunce of cry1tes pa11yon”—designates a new shift in perspective whereby de Worde reveals a deeper understanding of the Scale’s principles. This image is not the only variation from previous Scale editions, for de Worde includes two more unusual woodcut images in STC 14044. Inserted near the end of Scale I, the next woodcut is of Christ sitting on a tilted crucifix, with instruments of torture lying on the ground.

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Figure 2.5: Christ on Crucifix, STC 14044

This motif, known as the arma Christi, was common in medieval literature and art, and de Worde links Hilton’s spirituality to a long tradition in meditative art and representation.23 The third image, a montage of scenes from Christ’s life, is added at the transition between Scale II and the Mixed Life. The central encircled image of Christ hanging from a cross stands out as the primary focal point. Of the extra illustrations in this edition, this image indicates that de Worde was more vigilant about his woodcut choices, for this image fortifies the primary lesson of the Mixed Life—“to worschipe [Christ] by mynde of his passion, and of his oþere werkes in his manheed bi deuocioun and meditacioun of him” (Ogilvie-Thomson 26:278-80).

23

The inclusion of this woodcut also emphasizes the institutional authority of Hilton’s teaching. See Rossell Hope Robbins, "The 'Arma Christi' Rolls," The Modern Language Review 34 (1939): 415-421.

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Figure 2.6: Christ’s Life, STC 14044

Although these woodcut images decorate the pages of the text and function as a visual aid to readers, de Worde aligns Hilton with more affective tradition of spiritual meditation—the woodcuts focus on the body of Christ even though the text does not. As a result, de Worde’s representation of the Passion is dependent on Richard Rolle’s notion about the role of Passion in one’s meditative practices. Rolle was an early fourteenthcentury writer, whose works of spiritual devotion, many written for women, use bodily intensity to express pious commitment. As I have discussed earlier, Hilton attempts to temper the influence of affective piety in his treatises. Writers of the period were aware of the literature of their contemporaries, and would often use their own work as a means to respond to those ideas; such is the case in Hilton’s Scale. Rolle’s doctrine is inextricably linked to affective piety, and “anyone writing and advising on the spiritual 31

life in England would have had to take his teaching into consideration, either to corroborate it, to deny it in parts, or to oppose it completely” (Renevey 113). Though Rolle is never mentioned by name, Hilton’s references to the fire of love indicate that he is, in fact, responding to a Rollean model of affective piety that focuses on unattainable bodily manifestations. In the Incendium Amoris, Rolle explains, “þe hy lufe of criste sothely in thre þingis standis: In heet, In songe, In suetnes” (Harvey 33:8-9). He further elaborates, Heet sothely I call, qwen mynde treuly is kyndyld in lufe euerlastynge, & þe hart on þe same maner to byrn not hopingly, bot verraly is felt. Þe hart treuly in to fyre gifys felynge of byrnnyng lufe. Songe I call, when in a plenteuus saull swetnes of euerlastynge lovynge with byrnynge is takynn, & thoyth in to songe inturnyd, & mynde in to full swete sounde is chaungyd. (Harvey 33:28-33 italics mine) Hilton’s reference to Rolle, however obscure it may be, attempts to regulate the fire of love; nevertheless, the Scale does not wholly promote an anti-Rollean agenda. Hilton introduces skepticism about the phenomena associated with ecstatic and purely subjective feelings, but in no way does he exhaustively denounce the possibility of such an experience. Alternatively, Hilton cautions fledgling devotees about the reliability of the fire of love, particularly when a novice is in the early stages of contemplative development: Visiones or revelaciouns of ony maner spirite, bodili apperynge or in ymagynynge, slepand or wakand, or ellis ony othere feelinge in the bodili wittes maad as it were goosteli; either in sownynge of the eere, or saverynge in the mouth, or smellynge in the nose, or ellis ony felable heete as it were fier glowand and warmand the breest, or ony othere partie of the bodi, or onythinge that mai be feelyd bi bodili wit, though it be never so comfortable and lykande, aren not verili contemplacion; ne thei aren but symple and secundarie though thei be good, in regard of goostli vertues and in goosteli knowynge and loovyng of God. (Bestul, Scale I, 200-07, italics mine)

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However, Hilton admits that these feelings may help to advance an individual’s spiritual progress since they maketh thee the more devoute and the more fervent for to pray, it maketh thee the more wise for to thenke goostli thoughtes; and […] it turneth and quykeneth thyn herte to more desire of vertues and encreseeth thi love more bothe to God and to thyn evene Cristen. (Bestul, Scale I, 251-56) The fire of love’s elusive nature is therefore one which must first be tempered by logic and reason; then, and only then, can neophytes develop a higher level of meditation. While chapters ten and eleven of Scale I attempt to clarify the fire of love as Hilton views it, the topic is by no means laid to rest. One of the boldest moves Hilton makes with regards to this physical manifestation is to admit his own inexperience with the phenomenon. This does not, however, hinder his willingness to accept the fire of love as a genuine expression of religious devotion; in fact, I would argue that it enables him to approach the subject with more impartiality. Rolle’s writing is poetic and represents a potential danger in its ability to confuse “simple” readers. As a writer with spiritual concerns for his audience, Hilton is obligated to respond to any sources that might lead the general populace astray. He thus explains the nuances of Rolle’s metaphorical language: Alle men and women that speken of the fier of love knowe not wel what it is, for what it is I can not telle thee, save this may I telle thee, it is neither bodili, ne it is bodili feelid. A soule mai fele it in praiere or in devocioun, whiche soule is in the bodi, but he felith it not bi no bodili witt. For though it be so, that yif it wirke in a soule the bodi mai turne into an heete as it were chafid for likynge travaile of the spirit, neverthelees the fier of love is not bodili, for it is oonly in the goostli desire of the soule. This is no doute to no man ne woman that felith and knoweth devocion, but summe aren so symple and wenen bicause that it is callid fier that it schulde be hoot as bodili fier is. (Bestul, Scale I, 670-77, italics mine)

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Hilton advocates an inward form of piety, but one that is different than Rolle’s insofar as it relies on reason and exterior guidance, not emotional experience. Hilton’s advice is thus didactic and admonitory in nature, although he still provides a degree of agency to the individual worshipper. Scale II, on the other hand, is more cautionary about the fire of love since Hilton assumes a more disciplinary voice. Here Hilton’s methodology stresses affective piety’s relative impracticality to the development of a successful, inwardly focused model of devotion. For the true contemplative, the path to God is one where the devout must “withdrawe thy thought from al bodili thynge outeward and fro mynde of thyn owen bodi also, and from alle thy fyve wittes as mykil as thou maist” (Bestul, Scale II, 1948-50, italics mine). This process is one of extreme isolation and complete submission, and a person can easily fall into the trap of delighting in physical sensations, rather than spiritual comprehension. Even obligatory acts such as “fastynge, wakynge, werynge of the heire and alle othere suffrynge of bodili penaunce, […] praiynge, wepynge, sighhynge, and thenkynge,” can produce a false sense of security if one “reste ai in hem, and lene so mykil to hem, and rewarde hem so greteli in his owene sight that he presumeth in his owen desertes, and thenketh himsilf ai riche and good and holi and virtuous” (Bestul, Scale II, 1052-54). If this is true of church-sanctioned pursuits, the completely unregulated and purely subjective experiences associated with affective piety must be handled with utmost care. Alternatively, Hilton recommends the following pragmatic approach to one’s devotional practices: It is not sikir to a man for to leven a good werk uttirli until he see and feele a betere. Upon the same wise it mai be seide of othir manere feelynges that aren like to bodili thynges, as heeryng of delitable songe, or feelynge of comfortable heete in the bodi, or seynge of light, or swettenesse of

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bodili savour. Thise aren not goosteli feelynges, for goostli feelynges aren felt in the myghtis of the soule, principali in undirstondynge and in love and litil in imaginacioun; but thise feelynges aren in imaginacion, and therfore thei aren not goostli feelynges, but whan thei are best and moste trewe yit aren thei but outeward tokenes of inli grace that is feelt in the myghttis of the soule. (Bestul, Scale II, 2066-74, italics mine) The foundations of Rollean spirituality are not so much condemned here as they are mitigated. Hilton may sanction religious autonomy in the Scale, but that freedom does not come without inherent risks. As Hilton attempts to thwart heretical behavior, he fully asserts the power that his position as an Augustinian Prior affords him. In the Scale, Hilton argues that a reader must be able to withdraw from the distractions of the outside world to derive comfort from the quiet workings of spiritual interiority, and the freedoms associated with this level of introspection were of utmost concern for medival writers English writers […] had some reason to be wary of interiority taken too far, or in just slightly the wrong direction. Even if their readers did not develop heterodox opinions, there was the danger that in investing so much energy in their interior worlds, they might withdraw some of it from liturgical and communal engagement. (Bryan 54) Hilton’s monastic affiliation compels him to defend and support the teachings of the Church, but strict admonitions do not occupy a critical position in his work. The goal of the Scale is not to combat heresy, and Hilton does not engage in the religious dissent that would capture Nicholas Love’s attention in the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Of all the techniques that contributed to the Scale’s longevity, the most crucial one was Hilton’s ability to within an historic void of sorts. This is not to say that he neglects to tackle medieval interests; these issues simply do not consume the framework of his treatise. The Scale may have been a product of the late fourteenth-century world, but those values were easily transferrable to audiences in the tumultuous years leading up to

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and following Henry VIII’s break from Rome. As a result, little editorial intervention was required to prepare Hilton’s work for redeployment in the printed medium. Rolle was printed by de Worde in the early modern period, but none of these had the popularity of Hilton’s Scale. Of the eight early modern editions purported to be the work of Rolle, most are actually not.24 Of course, we must take into consideration the possibility that some editions may not have survived the turmoil of the intervening years. In spite of this, it appears that early printers did not look to the works of Rolle with the regularity that they did Hilton. The Scale’s ambiguity regarding the concept of heresy was able to keep abreast of the constantly evolving definition of unorthodox behavior throughout following centuries. What does remain fixed and invariable are the erroneous claims of the heretics, [who] aren so blynt with this feyned light that thei holden the highenesse of here owen herte and unbuxumnesse to the lawis of Hooli Chirche, as it were perfite mekenesse to the Gospel and to the lawes of God. And thei wenen that the folwynge of here owen wille were fredom of spirit, and therfore thei bigynne to reyne as blake cloudis watir of erroures and heresies, for the wordes that thei reynen bi prechynge sounen al to backebitynge, to stryvynge, and to discord-makynge, reprevynge of states and of persones. (Bestul, Scale II, 1563-69) Such forms of rebellion can only be vanquished by the person’s complete submission to Holy Church, and Hilton reminds the reader that he must “trowen stidefasteli as Holi Chirche troweth, and putteth hem fulli in the merci of God and meken hem undir the sacraments and lawes of Holi Chirche,” even though the religious agendas of later British

24

Three different editions of The Remedy Ayenst the Trouble of Temtacyons are erroneously ascribed to Rolle’s pen—STCs 2087.5, 20876, and 21263. STC 20875.5 appeared in 1508, STC 20876 in 1519, and STC 21263 in 1525. The Folger library’s catalogue notes that only a few quotations in the Remedy were written by Rolle; otherwise, the work is that of someone else. De Worde’s other Rollean treatise is Contemplacyons of the Drede and Loue of God. Two editions were printed by De Worde; one in 1506 (STC 21259), and the other in 1519 (STC 21260).

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monarchs would disagree on the applicability of certain sacraments and laws (Bestul, Scale II, 460-62). Catechical remedy is not discussed, and Hilton urges his readers to love and worschipe in thyn herte the lawes and the ordenaunces maad bi prelates and rulers of Hooli Chirche, either in declarynge of the feith, or in the sacramentis, or in general governance of alle Cristen men. Mekeli and truli assente to hem, though it be so that thou knowe not the cause of here ordenaunce; and though thee thenketh that summe were unskileful, thu schalt not deme hem, ne reprove hem, but receyve and worschipe hem alle. (Bestul, Scale I, 543-48) This methodology allows for the changing nature of heretical behavior, and enables later readers to supply their own notions of heterodoxy in place of generalities. Although Hilton never cites Lollardy by name in either Scale I or II, he is very concerned with its influence, and contemporary audiences could certainly discern an anti-Wycliffite tone. Whereas the most significant passage in support of Church doctrine does not occur until chapter twenty-one of Scale I, a discussion on the subjects of baptism, the sacrament, and confession are expeditiously handled in the opening chapters of Scale II. The presumably later dating of Scale II, combined with the precedence Hilton ascribes to heretical behavior, indicates a growing ecclesiastic concern for Wycliffism and the problems posed by the spread of Lollardy.25 Hilton’s decision to reach out to a more diverse readership in Scale II adds yet another dimension to this debate. An anchoritic audience would not necessarily need a detailed list of actions that constitute heretical behavior, nor would she require instruction on the importance of the sacrament and confession. However, once lay audiences were formulated into the readership of Scale, Hilton needed, at the very least, to address Wycliffite issues.

25

Most scholars, like Cheryl Taylor, believe that Scale II was “composed shortly before Hilton’s death on 24 March 1396” (Taylor 84). If this is true, nearly one decade separates the two treatises from one another.

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The controversy surrounding confession, baptism, and the blessedness of the sacrament were a great preoccupation of the late fourteenth century, and these issues would remain in the public interest for decades, even centuries, to come. The early years of the sixteenth century may have presented favorable conditions for Hilton’s brand of spirituality, but as the works of Tyndale influenced Henry VIII’s reformative pursuits, Hilton’s Scale was relegated to the historic past from which it originated. Not unexpectedly, Hilton’s value continued to be venerated among Catholic exiles and recusants. Helen Gardner cites a letter from Father Baker, “a famous mystic himself who not only had become director to the ‘newlie erected’ English order of St. Benedict,” but also solicited the help of Robert Cotton to supply his company of nuns with suitable Catholic works of devotion: There were manie good English books in olde time, whereof thoughe they [the nuns] have some, yet they want manie. And thervpon I am in their behallf become an humble suitor vnto you, to bestowe on them such bookes as you please, either manuscript or printed, being in English, conteining contemplation, Saints lives or other devotions. Hampoole’s works are proper for them. I wish I had Hilton’s Scala perfectionis in latein. (H. Gardner 124, italics mine) The sense of loss Father Baker expresses for the literature of the past clearly posits Hilton’s place in the canon.26 England’s printing presses may not have produced another Hilton edition for more than a hundred years, but the Augustinian did not entirely lose his readership. The Scale and the Mixed Life were circulated among recusants throughout the volatile religious climes of the mid-to-late sixteenth century and, as luck would have it,

26

Hilary Carey notes that another Catholic yearned for the works of Hilton: In 1532 John Houghton, the last prior of the London Charterhouse, wrote to a brother foundation in Cologne for some works of a mystical nature complaining that such texts were very hard to get, ‘because the pious and the learned seize them at once when any came over, so that the Carthusians themselves have to go hungry.’” (Carey 376)

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they would survive the dissolution of the monasteries in both manuscript and printed forms. While the Scale’s disappearance from mid sixteenth-century bookstalls signals changing spiritual trends, its mid-17th century reappearance was closely modeled on that of its predecessors. In 1659, T.R. printed the Scale for T. Garthwait, a Londo bookseller who “dealt chiefly in theological literature” (Plomer 80).27 According to Henry Plomer, T.R. could be Thomas Ratcliffe, a printer from 1646-1667, or Thomas Rokes, whose press was in operation between 1658 and 1666. The case for with man is fairly convincing. Ratcliffe’s press was located near St. Bennet Paul’s Wharf, and eh was known to have “two presses, two apprentices, and seven workmen” in his employ” (Plomer 151). Rookes’ printing press was located even closer to the location where the editions were to be sold—“neer the little North door of St. Pauls,” at “the Lamb, at the East End of St Paul’s Church” (Wing 3882, A2; Plomer 156). The title-page of this edition, catalogued as Wing 3882, is similar to de Worde’s 1494 volume. Hilton is identified as the author of the treatise and the text’s printing history is also provided: “Printed fir1t in the yeare of 1494 and dedicated to the devout Lady Margaret, Mother to Henry the 7th” (Wing 3882, title page). Some noteworthy modifications were made, though, to familiarize later audiences with both the author and his treatise. There is a two page biography of Hilton which, for matters of scholarly interest, I include in its entirety: Walter Hilton was an English Carthusian Monke, of the Monasterie (as it 2eems) built by Henry the fifth, King of England, on the other side of Thames, over against Sion, and called Bethleem. I gather him to have been Dr. in Divinity, because in the Titles of his Writings for the most part he is honoured with the name of Mr. A man eminent for piety and learning; and according to his rule (which he left 2trictly ob2erved) always 27

EEBO’s copy is from the British Library. There is no reference to a T. Garthwait in this edition, but the printer is cited as T.R.

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attentive to the aßiduous Contemplation of divine matters. Which thing, though all Authors should have been 2ilent in, yet his writings would have 2ufficiently proclaimed, and the very title of his Tractates extant do evidence. He was famous about the yeare of our Lord 1433, in the Reign of Henry the sixth. (Wing 3882, A2-A2v)28 The need to present biographical information about the author is important for several reasons. Most important is the desire to maintain the integrity of the author’s character. It also signals that Catholic readers wanted to reconnect with the past because they valued the works of medieval spiritual leaders. T.R. included these details to situate Hilton within a firmly established tradition, but in reconstructing a history that his contemporaries knew little about, his sense of historical accuracy falls short of the few truths current scholars know about Hilton’s past. In spite of these errors, neither Hilton’s reputation nor his principles suffer as his nearly three century-old treatise is resurrected from the past. Whoever T.R. may have been—Rookes, Ratcliffe, or someone else—he was clearly working from an earlier printed edition of the Scale instead of a manuscript. The 1659 edition, then, is as much of an homage to de Worde, as it is to Hilton’s memory. Not only does T.R. mention Lady Margaret’s connection with de Worde but, before transitioning into the Mixed Life, he includes the dedicatory poem written for her benefit. While de Worde’s intial presentation of the book happened under entirely different circumstances, the re-association of the text with Lady Margaret’s name solidifies the Scale as a respectable piece of literature acknowledged by royal audiences. T.R. also uses the same title-page woodcut of de Worde’s 1533 Scale. Although the 1659 edition was modernized “by the changing of 1ome antiquated words, [and] rendered more intelligible” for later audiences, the striking similarities it shares with its predecessors testify to the 28

I have left the words italicized as they are in the edition.

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long-lasting permanence of both Hilton’s and de Worde’s contributions to early-modern spirituality. What, then, does the work of Hilton offer later audiences that Richard Rolle, Margery Kempe, or Julian of Norwich do not? Thomas Bestul summarizes Hilton’s appeal by suggesting that his book perhaps found so may 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 colorful contemporaries Rolle, Julian, or Kempe, may have been a source of strength in his own time. (Bestul 98) The notion of Hilton’s supposed blandness speaks considerably to the genre in which the Scale most appropriately fits. Many scholars refer to the Scale as a mystical treatise, but I would argue that Hilton’s straighforwardness and his predilection to remain emotionally grounded places his text on the far perimeters of mysticism. In fact, Ad Putter and Joseph Milosh believe that the Scale, if it is to be categorized, fits more within the religioushandbook tradition. One of the defining characteristics of this genre is that “the materials from the religious-handbook tradition […] are those which instruct practically and which, charted in the spiritual hierarchy, precede teachings on contemplation” (Milosh 140). Hilton’s advice is didactic, but not to the extent that Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is. Contemporary treatises of the period tended to cultivate meditative practices that empowered a layman’s sense of individuality, and Hilton’s readers have significantly more independence with their contemplative practices. While one’s meditative practice could be enhanced in private, Hilton’s readers were directed to stay within the confines of orthodoxy through prayer:

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The most special praiere that the soule useth and hath most confort in, I hope, is the Pater Noster, or elles psalmes of the sautier; the Pater Noster for lewid men, and psalms and ympnes and othere servyce of Holi Chirche for lettred men. The soule praieth thanne not in manere as it dide bifore, ne in comone manere of othere men by highnesse of vois or bi renable spekynge oute; but in ful greet stilnesse of vois and softenesse of herte. For whi, his mynde is not trobled ne taried with outeward thynges, but hool gadred togedre in itsilf, and the soule is sette as hit were into goostli presence of Jhesu; and therfore everiche silable and every word is sowned savourli, sweteli and delitabli, with ful acord of mouth and of herte. (Bestul, Scale II, 3167-7) Hilton’s greatest strength, then, is grounded in his ability to reinforce his counsel without being overbearing, and Joseph Milosh notes, the “moderat[ion of Hilton’s] teachings seem to make [one’s spiritual] goals more easily attainable than unflexible or extreme ones” (Milosh 127). This enthusiasm for spiritual autonomy was integral for early modern readers as well, and it is not surprising that the inwardly-focused advice of the Scale maintained a great level of popularity up to and following the Reformation As a genre of writing, devotional literature compels its readers to engage in a process of self-awareness in their quest to obtain spiritual union with God. If medieval and early modern audiences alike were insistent on obtaining copies of this grounbraking handbook, the text was equally demanding of its readers. Hilton’s directives on scaling the ladder of perfection are harsh, but essential: By meditacion thou see hou mykil thee wanteth of vertues; and bi prayer schalt thou gete hem. Bi meditacion schalt thou see thi wrecchidnesse, thi synnes, and thi wikkidnessis, as pryde, coveytise, glotonye, leccherie, wikide stiryngis of envye, ire, haterede, malincolie, angrynesse, bittirnesse, sleughthe, and unskilful hevynesse. (Bestul, Scale I: 335-39) Thomas Bestul asserts that Hilton’s treatises “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” (Bestul

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89). Affective piety may have been at its peak in the late fourteenth century, but the Scale advocates a passive form of religiosity. Much of Hilton’s restraint is a response to other devotional texts of the period. Vision and performativity, the primary motivations of Rollean philosophy, are revised and situated within Hilton’s parameters of orthodoxy; as such, this rhetorical methodology benefited both contemporary and later audiences. Moreover, the intimacy of Hilton’s tone is able to span the ages and speak to the immediacy of any time and age, making the Scale of Perfection a unique treatise of the period. Nearly a century would come to pass between the composition of the Scale of Perfection and the Mixed Life, but William Caxton’s introduction of the printing press to England marks the reproduction of texts that endorse more conservative values over the exuberance demonstrated by other popular Middle English mystics. Julian of Norwich’s Revelations would not be printed until 1670; Margery Kempe’s Book was dramatically abridged; and Rolle, whose treatises helped define the affective movement, does not come close to the regularity in print experienced by Hilton. Of the writers discussed in this study, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is most complimentary to Julian of Norwich’s Revelations in the sense that “both writers derive their theory from the Augustinian discourse of introspective mysticism” (Baker 37). Writing at approximately the same time, these two writers have more in common than philosophical inclinations. Both express inordinate concern for the interpretation readers could derive from their work. Whereas Hilton produces a complimentary treatise to accompany and further develop the vision of Scale I, Julian’s care resulted in the production of a longer version of her original Revelations. Hilton may not have written the Scale for Julian specifically, but his

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anonymous anchoress may have been much like Julian was upon her enclosure. More importantly, while Scale I can best be described as advice for enclosure, the Revelations represents an answer from the cell.

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CHAPTER III TELLING TALES: THE CONSTRUCTION OF JULIAN’S PERSONA AND TEXT IN HER MEDIEVAL VERSIONS AND SERENUS CRESSY’S 1670 REVELATIONS Julian of Norwich was one of the most fascinating and important spiritual writers of the late Middle Ages, but she was not printed until the latter half of the seventeenth century. An example of what Nicholas Watson designates as “speculative vernacular theology,” the raison d’être of the Revelations is to relate Julian’s experiential visions to her “evencristene, that thaye might alle see and knawe the same that [she] saw, for [she] walde that it ware conforthe to thame” (Watson 3, 75:8-10).29 Julian’s quest for spiritual autonomy is in accordance with the literature of the period, but she enforces it with more vigor than the likes of her contemporaries. The genius of the treatise is that it is predicated on complicated series of paradoxes—it is simultaneously didactic in its nondidacticism, traditional in its non-traditionalism, and empowering in its vulnerability. Her meditative style, which clearly empowers the individual, places Julian on the threshold of what “we now describe as medieval and modern worlds, [and] she combines elements of both without wholly belonging to either” (Bauerschmidt 189). That a female-authored text took so long to be printed reinforces the notion that there was a limit to the 29

All quotations from Julian’s texts—both Short and Long versions—will be cited by page number, followed by line number.

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personalized interiority of early modern spirituality, especially for women. In an attempt to construct a history for Cressy’s 1670 edition of the Revelations we must first consider the conditions under which her manuscripts circulated. Early modern printers would have closely scrutinized the Revelations to ascertain if it conformed to conventional models of spirituality before disseminating it in print, and the issue of Julian’s gender—her femininity—made her interior, highly personalized, highly autonomous spirituality uncomfortable for early modern audiences. If Julian’s treatise remained valuable to later audiences—and Cressy’s edition proves that it did—it was likely more on account of her bibliographic interest. Perhaps on account of a small, yet important, manuscript tradition, the treatises survived the dissolution of the monasteries; in fact, famous libraries such as those compiled by William Camden and Sir Robert Cotton may very well have kept Julian’s work in manuscript circulation among early modern bibliophiles. The Revelations is extant in three manuscripts of considerably later dating: Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Fonds Anglais 40, a late sixteenth-century edition; British Library Sloane 2499, a late seventeenth-century edition; and British Library Sloane 3705, from the early eighteenth century.30 In the introduction to his recent edition of the Revelations, Nicholas Watson suggests that the Sloane manuscripts, both of them probably copied by nuns determined to retain an identity as English Catholics, treat A Revelation with the reverence reserved for a heritage that is precious partly because it has so nearly been lost. Indeed, it is to this preservationist attitude, and the care it engendered in the Paris and Sloane scribes to reproduce the now obscure language of their exemplars, that we owe the work’s survival in something like original shape. (Watson 14)

30

These manuscripts have been dated by watermarks.

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While the religious climate may have shifted in the seventeenth century, it enabled the nuns from the convent to derive inspiration from one of their own: a woman who, like them, endured a great personal struggle to “be purged by the mercy of God, and after live more to the worshippe of God” (Watson 127:24-25). If Julian’s style of interior meditation was too personal for sixteenth-century printers, her legacy was not confined to a coterie manuscript culture that survived into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although her later print audience was itself small and specialized, Julian’s entry into early modern print shows the continued importance of medieval texts to later conceptions of gendered spirituality. It is, of course, impossible to hypothesize the amount of manuscripts in circulation up to the early years of Caxton and de Worde’s printing presses, but more insight regarding editorial preferences of the time can be gleaned from the surviving manuscripts. What little information we do know about the author and the genesis of her work can be found in the incipit to the Revelations’ predecessor, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman.31 In the only surviving mid fifteenth-century manuscript of A Vision, BL Addit 37790 (also known as Amherst), its scribe lists the following details about Julian and the origins of her work: “Here es a vision, shewed be the goodenes of God to a devoute woman. And hir name es Julian, that is recluse atte Norwiche and yit is on life, anno domini 1413” (Watson 63, italics mine).32 While the incipit does little to advance

31

The title A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman is given by a fifteenth-century scribe. Numerous scholars have addressed the issue of these two versions. For more information on this subject see Colledge and Walsh’s “Editing Julian of Norwich’s Revelations,” Marion Glasscoe’s “Visions and Revisions,” and Barry Windeatt’s “Julian of Norwich and Her Audience.”

32

There is a considerable amount of controversy about when Julian actually wrote both A Vision and the Revelations.In his 1993 essay “The Composition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love,” Nicholas Watson resituates the dating of A Vision to sometime around 1388, but most scholars believe that it was written in 1373. Watson also hypothesizes that it is a “possibility, which I think we need to take at least

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our knowledge of this incredibly gifted writer, it encourages readers to “see Julian as she describes herself at the time when she received the revelations, already, it would seem, firmly established in a monastic environment” (Colledge and Walsh 419). The scribe’s emphasis of Julian’s position as a woman safely ensconced within monastic environs adds a layer of legitimacy to both the writer and her book. Consequently, the observation privileges an older and wiser Julian over the young woman who had “a wilfulle desire to hafe of Goddes gifte a bodelye syekenes. And [she] wolde that this bodilye syekenes might have beene so harde as to the dede so that [she] might in the sekenes take alle [her] rightinges of halye kyrke” (Watson 63:21-23).33 Scholars have no other extant manuscript of A Vision to compare with the midfifteenth century Amherst, but the treatise seems to have endured less editorial interference than Margery Kempe’s Book, which I will focus on in the following chapter. While Amherst’s A Vision remains uncorrupted except for marginal annotations, such is not the case with the earliest surviving copy of Julian’s Revelations, found in Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4. As the archetypal model of a text designed for different audiences, Westminster is “usually dated to around 1500 on the basis of its handwriting and orthography” (Watson 418).34 This edition of the Revelations is

equally seriously [as the dating of A Vision], is that in 1413, forty years after her original revelation and twenty years after the later of her secondary revelations, Julian was still at work on the revised version of her book” (Watson, “Composition,” 681). 33

The title A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman is taken from the scribe’s incipit.

34

The annotations generally highlight passages of orthodoxy. Key phrases are underlined within the text, the abbreviation for nota bene occurs regularly, and a manicule appears on 109v. William Sherman’s book, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England, is invaluable to the study of readerly annotations. In his chapter on the manicule, Sherman provides an overview about the appearance of this drawing. As he notes, “between at least the twelfth and eighteenth centuries,” the manicule “may have been the most common symbol produced both for and by readers in the margins of manuscripts and printed books” (Sherman 29).

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extensively abridged and, as Hugh Kempster asserts, was “intended [for a lay audience] pursuing the ‘mixed life’” (Kempster 272). In this chapter I will analyze how Westminster scribe’s refashioning showcases the type of editorial work found in the printed copies of Margery’s Book. Changes to Julian of Norwich’s works demonstrate such drastic interventions did not originate with print: the custom started in the manuscript tradition and persisted in the printed medium. By showing a sustained tradition of editing medieval spiritual texts for early modern audiences—both in manuscript and print—I seek to show that Julian’s interior spirituality was later utilized as part of a distinctively Catholic tradition that was represented as under duress in the seventeenth century. Julian is very different than the works of Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love, and Margery Kempe, which lends a sense of obscurity to her text. Both Amherst and Westminster are packaged as spiritual anthologies. In Amherst, one can find Richard Rolle’s Emendatio Vitae and Incendium Amoris, Jan van Ruysbroeck’s Treatise of Perfection, Henry Suso’s Horologium Sapientiae, and excerpts from Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. Although the continental works of Bridget of Sweden and Marguerite Porete form part of the manuscript, the translator of Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, a person identified only by the initials M.N, ascribes the work to a male author.35 Bridget of Sweden’s Revelationes is not erroneously attributed to masculine origins in the sense that Porete’s text is, but the treatise was produced by an amanuensis; as such, it exists as a female-dictated, male-authored work. More importantly, the mystical visions of Bridget of Sweden were condensed into brief excerpts here, which is not only what will happen to Julian’s text in the Westminster

35

M.N refers to the author of The Mirror of Simple Souls as “’he...þat þis booke made’” (Cré 52).

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manuscript but, as I will discuss in the next chapter, is how the Book of Margery Kempe would be deployed in its two early modern editions. Julian’s status as the first recognized English woman writer thus is significantly diminished in this collection. Surrounded by the works of men, her Revelations becomes subordinate to a tradition of patriarchal authority in the sense that her independent, spiritual exploration is condensed into a series of prescriptive spiritual adages. Her text is far from the didactic model offered by Ruysbroeck, Suso, and Hilton, but in aligning her with the fame and erudition of these male writers, the medieval scribes impart a sense of authority that Julian herself never implies. There is great power ascribed to the written word and, as a female writer who does not utilize the trope of a scribe, Julian writes with a strategically guarded discourse. Long-established gender roles prevent women from engaging in spiritual pedagogy of any sort, and while Julian does not intend to usurp patriarchal authority with the advice she has to offer, her methodology is certainly unconventional.36 Comprised of four different treatises, Westminster is a spiritual anthology similar to its ancestor and, once again, Julian’s work is deposited amongst the confines of patriarchal discourse. That the scribe of Westminster includes the same Hiltonian tracts as Amherst—Qui habitat, Bonum est, and long excerpts from The Scale of Perfection— indicates his familiarity with the manuscript, though he is forced to contend with gender issues of a more complex nature when he substitutes A Vision with the more theologically sophisticated Revelations.37 It takes approximately fifteen years for Julian to expand A

36

Of course, Julian’s reluctance to assume the role of a spiritual advisor did not preclude other devout laypersons from seeking her counsel. As an anchoress in the flourishing town of Norwich, Julian’s reputation was known throughout much of England, prompting a visit by the aspiring mystic, Margery Kempe. 37

Qui habitat and Bonum est are only attributed to Hilton, though most scholars believe it to be his work.

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Vision into the Revelations, and this intense period of meditation enables her to develop a level of maturity that reveals a woman far more advanced than the “simple creature unlettered” she claims to be (Watson 125:1). This observation is not offered to denigrate her first attempt at writing, but rather to emphasize how the ubiquitous quandary of female authorship made circulation troublesome in a manuscript culture, let alone the greater accessibility guaranteed by the printed medium. There are a multitude of factors which, when added together, may shed light on why sixteenth-century printers refrained from printing both A Vision and the Revelations. If manuscript interference is any indication, the treatise was viewed with great interest and caution. Oftentimes, the fear of anything that could be misconstrued as unorthodox prompted scribes to intervene in ways that altered the original appearance of the work. Scribal intervention in the Westminster manuscript takes the form of a written warning to the reader: I pray Almighty God that this book come not but to the hands of them that will be his faithful lovers, and to the hope it will submit them to the faith of holy Church, and obey the holesom understanding and teaching of the men that be of verteous life […] for this Revelation is high Divinity and hey wisdam wherefore it may not dwellen with him that is thrall to sins and to the devill. And beware thou loke not on thing after thy affection and liking and leave another for that is the condition of an Heretick. (Sloane 2499, 57v) Apparently, the Revelations is not meant for everyone, and the scribe’s admonition indicates concern over the correct way to approach the text. He constructs an audience capable of reading Julian if only they “submit […] to the faith of holy Church.” Later redactors may not have taken this warning quite literally, but if former scribes tried to normalize a potentially hazardous treatise, as this warning suggests, early modern editors may have decided to ignore the text rather than put forth the revisionary effort that it

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required. A similar tactic was employed with the copy of Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls included in Amherst. The transmission of heterodox texts was dangerous, and the translator of Porete’s text clarifies passages that can easily be misconstrued.38 He explains, It hase bene mistaken of sum persones that hafe used the boke [Mirror of Simple Souls]. Therefore at siche places there me semed most need I wylle write mo wordes thereto in manner of glose after my simple kunynge as me semes best. And in these fewe places that I put in more than I fynde written I wille be gyne with the ferste letter of my name M and ende with this letter N the firste of my surname. (BL Addit 37790, 138r) With earlier copies of the translation presumably still in circulation—there are a total of three Middle English manuscripts of the Mirror of Simple Souls—M.N. may have been concerned that he could face charges of heresy as a result of his work. In her Mirror, Porete “neither desires not despises the practices of the church and she seeks nothing” (Babinsly 43). Julian does not advocate any such transgressive ideas in her own text, but pairing A Vision with Porete places her text in dangerous company, especially if early modern printers knew that Porete was burned at the stake as a result of her heretical inclinations. This may very well be the reason why the Westminster scribe transcribes the Revelations in lieu of A Vision in his early fifteenth-century compendium. Amherst’s profuse marginalia demonstrates that its readers were invested not only in orthodoxy, but also the communal atmosphere that manuscripts provide. Medieval scribes notoriously emphasized passages of import, and these notes constitute a kind of spiritual community. For a text whose premise is to relay the fact that “god will wit that all the soules that shalle be saved in heven without ende be knit in this know, and oned in 38

The Mirror of Simple Souls and its author had a troubled history. Marguerite was charged with heresy and imprisoned, her text, of which “fifteen articles had been excerpted,” was deemed heretical by a group of theologians (Babinsky 22). The book was destroyed and its author was burned at the stake on June 1, 1310.

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this oning, and made holy in this holyhede,” such notes constitute a kind of spiritual community with any reader (Watson 295:52-54). In Amherst, the majority of these notes are not directed at the interior, spiritual pursuits of an individual; they indicate how one can seek institutional guidance from of the Church. While A Vision contains marginalia throughout the entirety of the text, it is most heavily annotated around the following passage: Oure lored lered me to […] hafe of Goddes gifte faith, hope, and charite, and kepe us therein to oure lives ende. And in this we say Pater noster, Ave, and Crede with devotion, as God wille giffe it. And thus we praye fore alle oure evencristen and for alle manere of men. (Watson 103:6-9, italics mine)39 Julian emphasizes her adherence to the “teching of holy church,” but she rarely specifies what she means by this (Watson 129:33). She only refers to the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the Creed by name, and once she expands A Vision into the Revelations she becomes increasingly more ambiguous about the “the teaching and the preching of holy church,” and omits the very few passages about Church doctrine (Watson 159:38-9). Of course, the Pater Noster, the Ave, and the Credo had formed the foundation of medieval doctrine since the Lambeth council of 1281; therefore, the prayers were known by all medieval persons whether they were secular or clerical, illiterate or literate.40 If everyone, then, knew what constituted conformation to the Holy Church, is it unusual for Julian to expunge these topics in a text meant to benefit even the commonest of laypersons? It is when we consider the literature of the time period. Even the most cursory of glances at 39

These pages are 109v-111r in the manuscript. Most of the commentator’s markings consist of underlining passages. 40

For more research on Lambeth and its pastoral relation to Lateran IV see The Popular Literature of Medieval England edited by Thomas J. Hefferenan. The following essays are of particular interst: “The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology” by Leonard E. Boyle and “The Influence of Canonical and Episcopal Reform on Popular Books of Instruction” by Judith Shaw.

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devotional manuals circulating during the late fourteenth century reveals that the subject of proper religious practice was at the forefront of medieval thought and continued to be so well into the early modern era and beyond.41 Julian’s ascetic lifestyle may have allowed her greater ease to maneuver around the strict, regulatory practices of medieval Christianity, but that ambiguity did not necessarily work to her advantage in later religious and cultural milieu. Whereas later editors would re-contextualize Margery Kempe as an anchoress in order to further authenticate her Book, the anchoritic environ of the Revelations was, perhaps, a bit too ascetic for later audiences. As I will argue in “Margery Kempe, Wynkyn de Worde, Henry Pepwell, and the Counterfeit Anchoress of Fleet Street,” later printers entertained a fantasy of containment with Margery, but the intense interiority of Julian’s visions was disruptive to these same gender norms. The non-clerical environ of Julian’s sanctum is a threat to the Church in her promotion of spirituality as an interior, private realm: The inward party is a high and a blisseful life, which is alle in peece and in love, and this is more prively felte. And this party is in which mightly, wisely, and wilfully, I chose Jhesu to my heven. And in this, I saw sothly that the inward party is master and sovereyne to the outward. […] The inwarde party draweth the outward party, by grace, and both shalle be oned in blisse without ende by the vertu of Christ. (Watson 189:21-32, italics mine) This introspective format is more or less devoid of patriarchal supervision, and while Julian’s evasion of masculine interference in no way equates to unorthodox tendencies, her encouragement of solitary contemplative pursuits over communal experience provides little space for supervision of those not living under the auspices of the Church.

41

To name but a few: The Chastising of God’s Children, The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, Sawles Ward, Ancrene Wisse, Hali Meidhad, A Talkyng of the Love of God, the Lay Folk’s Catechism, Mirk’s Festial, and the Fifteen Oes.

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As a message concerning the role of private, devotional meditation, the Revelations is unlike any text written by Julian’s contemporaries. Although the trend of referencing other devotional treatises was fairly commonplace during the late medieval era, Julian remains unusually reticent about other circulating manuscripts. Her lack of engagement with any spiritual treatises of the time represents both a literal and figurative withdrawal from outside influences. Despite the fact that a monastic environ fosters a greater union with Christ, the decision to enter into a reclusorium was not one to be taken lightly.42 It is no coincidence, then, that the Revelations reflect such a deep level of interiority: Julian is cloistered in the private, interior world of a small cell; her visions, primarily described as ghostly and bodily, are the result of an interior miracle of sorts and cannot be substantiated; her interpretation of the visions require intense interior scrutiny; and, more importantly, the language of the text mirrors her interior lifestyle. As such, readers are figuratively drawn into the world of the reclusorium with the author. Hugh Kempster surmises that “the forces of conservatism and orthodoxy were too great for [Julian’s] highly original text to remain intact;” consequently, the Westminster scribe engages in a form of textual refashioning not evidenced by his Amherstian predecessor (Kempster 271). In order to align the Revelations with changing religious ideology, the scribe suppresses many instances of medieval spirituality—namely, “Julian’s more affective visions of Christ’s crucifixion” (Cobb 66). Affective piety formed the core of devotional practices during the Middle Ages, and medieval audiences

42

The specifics of Julian’s enclosure remain a mystery, but some scholars hypothesize that she may have lived a “secular life at the time of her Revelations” (Windeatt, “Julian of Norwich,” 68). Sister Benedicta Ward has also advanced the claim that Julian was a widower at the time of her visions. She cites Julian’s reference to her mother as proof that “she was a young widow living in her own household with her mother and her servants” when she received her visions (Ward 12).

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expected to see and read about the Passion in the art and literature of the period.43 Julian does not fail with her rendition; nevertheless, her vision differs significantly from other works of spiritual devotion. Part of this distinction stems from the authors’ divergent purposes. Walter Hilton’s and Nicholas Love’s treatises are speculative and prescriptive; moreover, Hilton avoids a lengthy Passion narrative. The Book of Margery Kempe seeks to gain approval for its histrionic namesake, yet it is as much of a commentary on medieval life as it is a tale of experience and redemption. The Revelations combines elements of all three of these works in varying degrees, though Julian adds an intense, emotional fervor similar to Rolle’s fire of love in her Passion narrative: I saw the bodily sight lasting of the plenteous bleding of the hede. The gret droppes of blode felle downe fro under the garlonde like pellotes, seeming as it had comen out of the veines. And in the coming oute they were browne rede, for the blode was full thicke. And in the spreding about they were bright rede. (Watson 147:9-13)44 This visually driven focus caters to novices, who oftentimes concentrate on macabre imagery to help push them deeper into a meditative state. Julian transcends this aspect of affective piety, uniting the standard with the sublime. Her proclivity to fuse the figure of the suffering Christ with domestic scenes aids in her transition from vision to interpretation: “The plentuoushede [of blood] is like to the droppes of water that falle of the evesing of an house after a grete shower of raine, that falle so thicke that no man may number them with bodily wit” (Watson 147:17-19). As her Passion narration builds in

43

For more information see Ghostly Sights: Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature by Denise Despres and Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu by Richard Kieckhefer. 44

This discourse is reminiscent of Richard Rolle’s Meditations on the Passion: A, lord, swete Ihesu, me þynketh I se þe rede blode ren doun by þy chekes, stremes aftyr euche side þe skyn of þy hede þe þornes al to-renten, for euche þorne pricked to þe brayn pan. (OgilvieThomson 76:287-91)

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intensity, she presents the reader with a degree of hope, rather than overwhelming despair heavily laden with grotesque imagery. The Westminster scribe’s alterations, presumably made to increase readership, further complicate Julian’s authorial prerogative by turning the treatise into “a more purely didactic work” (Cobb 61). If a manuscript editor thought Julian’s intensive, bodily piety might overstep socially defined boundaries of feminine modesty, which insisted on women’s physical containment as a sign of spiritual rectitude, it only follows that a printed text, designed to be circulated beyond a coterie readership, would be subject to equal, if not greater, editorial interventions. The first example is Julian’s insistence on Adam as the root of sin; the other is when she explores the meaning of sin in all its manifestations. That Adam was guilty of sin was certainly no secret to the Christian mind. Biblical exegesis maintained that Christ descended into Hell to save the patriarchs of the Old Testament; however, Julian deviates from misogynistic traditions of the time when she places Adam, rather than Eve, as the cause of their banishment from Eden: “Adams sinne was the most harme that ever was done or ever schalle to the worldes end. And also he shewde that this is openly knowen in all holy churchin erth” (Watson 215:68, italics mine). Her avoidance of implicating Eve is far from the proto-feminist writings of Christine De Pizan (fifteenth century) and Aemelia Lanyer (seventeenth century), but the subtlety of her language noticeably accentuates Adam’s responsibility for the Fall. While her intention is not to malign the figure of Adam, ecclesiasts of the late medieval and early modern eras were not as open-minded in their interpretation of the event. Just two decades later, Nicholas Love explains in his Mirror that “þe first woman Eue þorh pride assentynge to þe serpent þe deuel of helle was cause of mannus dampnacion”

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(Sargent 29:4-5). Of course, through Adam all died, but his sin is ultimately traced back through a longstanding tradition of misogyny. Julian’s atypical view of the Fall may not have been enough to constitute unorthodoxy, but her comprehension of sin and Hell challenges traditional religious doctrine. Although Purgatory was a place where the Church maintains humans could atone for their sinful, mortal activities, belief in its existence did little to abate the fear of the unknown. Death was something to prepare for, and “the whole structure of mortuary provision of Masses, alms, pilgrimage […] were raised on the belief that such largesse would hasten the soul’s passage through the pains of Purgatory” (Duffy 338). Devotional literature of the period capitalizes on the obsession concerning death, and the Ars Moriendi, one of the most popular fifteenth-century manuals about dying, is printed well into the early modern era.45 Likewise, visionary accounts of Purgatory, such as The Gast of Guy, Sir Owain, The Revelation of the Monk of Eynsham, and The Vision of William of Stranton, further sensationalize belief in Purgatory.46 The Revelations’ obsolescence in print may be attributed to Julian’s inability to engage in such literary trends. In spite of Julian’s desires to be shown Hell and Purgatory, the closest she gets is a nightmarish encounter with the Devil: Methought the fende set him in my throte, putting forth a visage fulle enre my face like a yonge man […] he grinned upon me with a shrewde loke; shewde me whit teth and se mekille, methought it the more ugly. Body ne handes had he none sharply, but with his pawes he helde me in the throte, and woulde have strangled me, but he might not. (Watson 333:1-8) 45

The Ars Moriendi was originally intended as an instructional manual for priests. Caxton’s printings of the Ars Moriendi were in 1490 and 1491 (STCs 789 and 786 respectively). De Worde’s editions came out in 1497 and 1506 (STCs 787 and 788). Other printings were done by Richard Pynson in 1495 and Robert Wyer in 1532. 46

The Gast of Guy is “based roughly on De Spiritu Guidonis, a first-person account by the Dominican Jean Gobi about his experiences with the spirit of Gy in the Southern French town of Alés […] from late December 1323 to 12 January 1324” (E. Foster, 15).

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Inadequate fantastical imaginings about death and dying, Purgatory and Hell, may have fallen flat with contemporary and future lay audiences, but her deviation from traditional Church teachings about sin casts the treatise further outside the boundaries of the norm. When Julian deliberates the necessity of sin, Christ assures her, “Sinne is behovely” (Watson 209:9-10). This avowal represents one of Julian’s greatest struggles with orthodoxy and the enigmatic nature of faith. She regularly emphasizes her obedience to the “teching of holy church” but, as discussed earlier, she rarely specifies what she means by this (Watson 129:33). Because the questions she poses are in the domain of patriarchal authority, she is quick to explain that her desire to understand these mysteries was not to take prefe of onything that longeth to oure faith. For I beleved sothfastly that hel and purgatory is for the same ende that holy church techeth for. But my mening was that I might have seen for lerning in alle thing that longeth to my faith, wherby I might live the more to Goddes wurshippe and to my profite. (Watson 225:2-6, italics mine) For medieval figures of authority, her vague generalizations of the “faith of holy church, which […] stode continually in my sight, willing and meaning never to receive onything that might be contrary therto” were simply not structured enough for simple souls wanting to gain more control over their own spirituality (Watson 157:18-21). The tension of this dilemma inevitably caused concern for medieval and early modern audiences alike. The gravitas of the Revelations is further intensified when Julian claims that not everyone is privy to the miracle of her experience: “This marvelous homelyhede may no man know in this life, but if he have it by specialle shewing of oure lorde, or of gret plenty of grace inwardly given of the holy gost” (Watson 149:45-47). There may have been other factors that kept Julian’s writings out of print, but her focus on such a radical

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form of interiority was certainly at odds with popular devotional practices of both fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England. As a woman professed to life in an anchorage, Julian transcends both time and place, inspiring countless readers through her words of wisdom. Although the Revelations did not catch the eyes of Caxton, de Worde, Pepwell, or any other early modern printer, Paris MS and the two Sloane manuscripts indicate that other sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury readers thought her work was worth preserving. Before the Reformation, Catholics never had to think of themselves as a group at all—they were simply, as Julian would say, “evencristens.” In the seventeenth century, however, Catholics re-imagined themselves as a persecuted group with a longstanding history of spiritual struggles. Many English recusants fled their homeland, and a large number of them professed to seminaries or nunneries in France and the Netherlands. One such individual was Hugh Paulin de Cressy, the very first printer of the Revelations. A man with strong ties to the Falklands, an influential Catholic family, Cressy entered into the Benedictine order at Douai in 1649, and took the name Serenus (Tavard 109).47 In an attempt to defend his conversion to the Catholic faith, Cressy wrote Exomologesis, a text that went to print three times between 1643 and 1659.48 After serving as a chaplain to “the English Benedictine nuns at Paris (1651-2), [he] was made subprior at St. Laurence’s (1652) and 47

The Falklands may have encouraged Cressy’s conversion to Catholicism. Henry Cary, Viscount Falkland, was married to Elizabeth Cary, a poet and dramatist who wrote The Tragedy of Miriam. Cressy befriended their son, Lucius, the second Viscount Falkland, and became “a member of [the] literary circle at Great Tew” (Lunn 131). Cressy’s association with the Falklands continued to thrive in France where Lucius’s sisters, Lucy, Mary, Elizabeth, and Anne were installed as nuns at the Benedictine Convent of Cambrai. 48

Its full title is Exomologesis or, A Faithful Narration of the Occasions and Motives of the Conversion to Catholic Unity of Hugh-Paulin de Cressy. It can be found in three printed editions: Wing C6894 from 1647, Wing C6895 from 1653, and Wing C6896 from 1659. All three of these editions were printed in Paris. No printer is listed for the first edition, but the last two editions were printed by John Billaine.

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then at St. Gregory’s (1653-60)” (Lunn 132). Cressy was an ardent admirer of the mystical tradition, and he later compiled Sancta Sophia, a large collection of writings by the famous Benedictine mystic, Augustine Baker.49 His editorial work with Sancta Sophia earned mixed reviews, but David Lunn claims that Cressy’s edition “is certainly smoother and clearer than the original, and faithful in its fashion” (Lunn 213).50 Unlike the drastic abridgment of Sancta Sophia, Cressy maintains the integrity of the Revelations, proving that later patriarchal figures were willing to extend due respect to female authors of the past. The availability of Catholic literature was scarce, both in England and in religious communities abroad, and it has been conjectured by Nicholas Watson that “Augustine Baker, the famous spiritual director to the Cambrai and Paris nuns, may have had a role in procuring the medieval manuscripts copied by the Sloane and (possibly) Paris scribes” (Watson 16). Indeed, Sloane 2499 may have been transcribed by Clementina Cary, and it is certainly no coincidence that Cressy’s edition of the Revelations is dedicated to Cary’s mother, Lady Mary Blount. Recusants living abroad “ke[pt] a flow of priests going into England to look after the scattered groups that […] remained in the home country,” and the spiritual well-being of Cary’s mother could have provided the impetus for Cressy to print the work of the beloved Norwich anchoress (Tavard 9). Although Lynn Staley claims, “Julian seems to write for a community of female readers whose needs preoccupied so many English devotional writers,” nothing in Julian’s language or style implies an exclusively female audience; in fact, to cater to such a limited group of readers would violate the principles of being “in onehede of cherite

49

The Benedictines commissioned him for this project in 1657 (Lunn 213).

50

Cressy condensed “over a million words in the MSS to about 200,000” in his 1657 edition of Sancta Sophia (Lunn 213).

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with alle my evencristen” (Staley, Powers of the Holy, 116; Watson 155:8). However, seventeenth-century audiences probably were women, and in his dedicatory epistle, Cressy formulates a readership as one comprised by and intended for women: The ju1t and grateful Re1entment which I have of the unmerited kindne1s, and friend1hip of your late mo1t Worthy and Noble Husband Sir George Blount, of your Ladi2hip, and your whole family obliged me, impatiently to de1ire an occa1ion, to make a publick Acknowledgement thereof. Permit me therefore here, to offer to your Lady2hip this 1mall Pre2ent, in which notwith1tanding, I can challenge no Interest of Right, but only the Care of publi1hing it. The Author of it, is a Per1on of your own Sex, who lived about Three Hundred years 1ince, intended it for You, and for 1uch Readers as your 1elf. (Cressy A2) Cressy’s commitment to maintaining the integrity of the text compels him to construct a more definitive identity for its author. Unfortunately, historical documentation from the medieval and early modern eras was not well-preserved and, more often than not, the ability to provide biographical information about the authors of the past was just not feasible. As we have seen in Hilton’s 1659 Scale edition, an identity was supplied for the author, and although the details were wrong, it was probably not an intentional falsification. In fact, several scholars credit Serenus Cressy as being the editor of this Scale edition.51 Certainly, Cressy was traveling back and forth to England from abroad, where he may have come into contact with the works of Hilton. He may very well played an integral role in the Scale’s printing, and Cressy’s biographical sketch of Hilton is similar in tone to the one he writes for Julian in his letter to the reader: I was de1irous to have told thee 1omewhat of the happy Virgin, the Compiler of these revelations: But after all the 1earch I could make, I could not di1cover anything touching her, more than what 1he occa1ionally 1prinkles in the Book it 1elf. The Po1t1cript acquaints us with her Name, Julian: As likewi1e her Profe11ion, which was of the 1tricte1t 1ort of Solitary Livers; being Inclo1ed all her life (alone) within four Walls. (Cressy A3) 51

Three of these scholars are Nicholas Watson, David Lunn, and Placid Spearritt.

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To this day, Cressy’s information forms the extent of what modern scholars know about Julian. While Cressy’s admiration prevents him from embellishing details about her life and book, he romanticizes both the author and her medieval origins. The only other form of interference made to the Revelations is an addition of a single woodcut. Although the image is quite small, it compensates for its size by being rich in symbolism. The selection of this particular woodcut reveals a very careful reader who used the treatise to help further his readers’ devotional practices:

Figure 3.1: Serenus Cressy’s edition of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations Seemingly, this woodcut depicts a prelapsarian Adam and Eve reclining in both corners of the image. While the first couple’s story does not play a major role in the Revelations, their role as the perpetrators of original sin is extremely important to Julian’s interpretation of the event. The face of the central character portrays the devil since horns protrude from either side of its head.52 That the first couple is reaching out to this figure symbolizes the temptation he offers, and his benign facial expression reveals how easy it is to be deceived by outward appearances. The severity of Adam and Eve’s sin is evidenced by the preponderance of skulls in the background, but the image is not one of total despair. The decision to open the Revelations with this woodcut upholds the theme of memento mori, and as careful readers of the text know, Christ reminds Julian time and 52

In “’I wolde for thy loue dye’: Julian, Romance Discourse, and the Masculine” Jay Ruud explains that devils were often depicted with horns. He also claims that when Julian is attacked by the devil in her visions, he “pos[es] as a young man” (Ruud 198). If we consider this information with regards to the woodcut image, we see that the head of the man in Cressy’s woodcut does seem to be that of a young man.

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time again that sin is a necessary evil: “Sinne is behovely, but alle shalle be wele, and alle shalle be wele, and alle maner of thinge shalle be wel” (Watson 209:9-11). The repentant sinner will be saved, and all one needs to do is remember the sins of the past and seek comfort in the safety of the Church. The intended audience for Cressy’s edition may have been Catholics, but seventeenth-century Catholicism was not the same as it was in the late fourteenth century. Followers still maintained the sacramental traditions of their religion, but prejudice against these ritualistic acts was frequently voiced by Catholic dissidents. In 1671 Edward Stillingfleet directly confutes Cressy’s edition of the Revelations in A Discourse concerning the Idolatry Practised in the Church of Rome and the danger of Salvation in the Communion of it: in an answer to some Papers of a revolted Protestant: wherein a particular Account is given of the Fanaticism and Divisions of that Church.53 Stillingfleet writes, We may justly admire what esteem Mr. Cressy had of that Lady to whose devout retirements he so gravely commends the blasphemous and senseless tittle tattle of this Hysterical Gossip. It were endless to repeat the Canting and Enthusiastick expressions, which signifie nothing in Mother Juliana’s Revelations; and one would wonder to what end such a Book were published among us, unless it were to convince us of this great truth, that we have not had so great Fanaticks and Enthusiasts among us, but they have had greater in the Roman Church. (Watson 453)54 If Stillingfleet detected fanaticism in the Revelations, imagine what he would have thought upon encountering the likes of Margery Kempe, who insists on making dangerous pilgrimages, wearing hair-shirts, fasting and, most of all, engaging in 53

This text is catalogued as Wing S5577. Stillingfleet was a Protestant who would become Dean of St. Paul’s in 1678. 54

Stillingfleet also scoffs at “The Revelations of S. Brigitt and S. Catharin [and] the great number of female Revelations approved in the Roman Church” (Watson 451). Cressy would respond to Stillingfleet’s attack one year later.

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histrionic behavior when in the throes of rapture. Here we see evidence, however, that interior, personal devotion such as Julian’s was viewed with a great deal of skepticism. According to Stillingfleet, for a woman to engage in such “senseless tittle tattle,” violates early modern gender expectations, regardless of the fact that Julian’s “canting and enthusiastick expressions” come nowhere near the performative piety evidenced in Margery Kempe’s Book. Cressy answers Stillingfleet’s attack in 1672 with Fanaticism Fanatically Imputed to the Catholick Church by Dr. Stillingfleet and the Imputations Refuted and Retorted by S[erenus] C[ressy], and this debate would continue for years, involving more persons than just Cressy and Stillingfleet.55 Cressy may have been responsible for producing a faithful reproduction of the Revelations for later audiences, but ultimately, Julian’s own act of self-censorship made his editorial job much easier. In “an age fraught with intense scrutiny from political and ecclesiastical authority,” Julian’s rhetoric illustrates the difficulties of being a woman writer (McEntire 3). A Vision, Julian’s first attempt at writing in the 1370s, emphasizes how heavily the influence of Pauline doctrine weighs on her authorial presence: Botte God forbade that ye shulde saye or take it so that I am a techere. For I meene nought so, no I mente nevere so. For I am a woman, lewed, febille, and freylle. Botte I wate wele, this that I saye I hafe it of the shewinge of him that es soverayne techare. Botte sotheleye charite stirres me to telle yowe it. For I wolde God ware knowen and min evencristene spede, as I wolde be myselfe, to the mare hatinge of sinne and lovinge of God. Botte for I am a woman shulde I therefore leve that I shulde nought telle yowe the goodenes of God, sine that I saw in that same time that it is his wille that it be knawen? (Watson, 75:35-42, italics mine) 55

Cressy would also publish A collection of several treatises in answer to Dr. Stillingfleet viz. 1. Fanaticism fanatically imputed by him to the Catholick Church, 2. The Roman church's devotions vindicated, 3. Of indulgences, 4. His Protestant-principles considered and I. Question: Why are you a Catholic? The answer follows. II. Question: But why are you a Protestant? An answer attempted (in vain). A man identified only as O.N. supports Cressy in The Roman-Church’s Devotions Vindicated from Doctour Stillingfleet’s Mis-representation, and Stillingfleet responds with An Answer to Several Late Treatises.

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Julian’s apology evinces a hesitancy that goes beyond the conventional humility topos, and by the time Julian revises the treatise nearly two decades later, many of these defensive apologies disappear.56 Though Julian still refrains from privileging the rights of an author in the Revelations, the need to acquiesce to ecclesiastical authority is superseded by the fact that she is Christ’s intermediary. Not only can Church officials not challenge the authority of Christ, they cannot compete with his instructions to seek comfort from within the soul: Pray interly: thoughe the think it savour the not, yet it is profitable inough, thoughe thou fele it nought. Pray interly: though thou fele nought, though thou see nought, yea, though thou think thou might not be. (Watson 251:33-36, italics mine) Consequently, Julian encourages a more revolutionary pursuit of private devotion that deviates from the didactic, regulatory advice so essential to Hilton’s Scale and Love’s Mirror. In Julian’s hands the pursuit of inward spirituality encourages a radical autonomy of worship, and in spite of the fact that her treatise was still being deployed in manuscript format it was overlooked by sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century printers. To redeploy such a revolutionary treatise would only attract the unwelcome attention of authorial figures and, quite possibly, lead to accusations of unorthodox behavior in an age when the parameters of heterodoxy were becoming more nebulous with each passing decade. It may have taken nearly three hundred years to bring the work of Julian to print, but Cressy was not the only male figure to esteem and desire the widespread

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Numerous scholars have addressed the issue of Julian’s changing rhetorical technique. For more information on this subject see Colledge and Walsh’s “Editing Julian of Norwich’s Revelations,” Marion Glasscoe’s “Visions and Revisions,” and Barry Windeatt’s “Julian of Norwich and Her Audience.”

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dissemination of her Revelations. He may have edited the text in preparation for the press, but it was ultimately sanctioned by John Placid Gascoigne, the “most Venerable Abbot of our Nation, by who1e order and liberality it is now publis1hed, and by con1equence 1ufficiently Approved” (Cressy A3).57 Such an endorsement is not found in sixteenth-century editions of Kempe and Hilton, but ecclesiastical sanction does sometimes heighten a work’s later appeal; for instance, in chapter five, “The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: Nicholas Love and His Mixed Audience,” I will argue that this treatise’s early modern popularity is directly linked to an endorsement by Archbishop Arundel in the early fifteenth century. Cressy’s publication of the Revelations renewed an interest in Julian studies that has continued to this very day. In 1843 the treatise was re-modernized by George Hargreave Parker, “an Anglican priest;” three decades later, in 1877, another edition was reprinted by Henry Collins, “an Anglican convert to Roman Catholicism” (Barratt 29, 30). The remainder of the nineteenth century would see several more reprintings that would continue into the twentieth century.58 That Julian’s text continued to attract attention by different types of readers stands as a testament to the revolutionary nature of both the author and her work, for she expresses intensely personal pain and struggle as part of a universal Christian experience. Although most current day interest in the text is scholarly, Julian continues to inspire modern-day

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Gascoigne was the Abbot of Lambspring “for more than thirty years” (Colledge and Walsh 14). The Gascoigne family has many ties to Catholic communities in France. Gascoigne’s sister, Catherine was a Prioress at Cambrai, and Justina, was Prioress of Paris (Colledge and Walsh 14). 58

For more information on this topic see Alexandra Barratt’s “How Many Children had Julian of Norwich?: Editions, Translations and Versions of Her Revelations.”

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evencristens.59 There has even been a song written about her by Sydney Carter, a British musician and songwriter: All shall be well, I’m telling you, let the winter come and go. All shall be well again, I know. Loud are the bells of Norwich and the people come and go. Here by the tower of Julian, I tell them what I know. (“Julian of Norwich Lyrics”) This is quite an accomplishment for a writer whose works experienced what might be a more egregious form of suppression than that enacted by early modern editors of the Book of Margery Kempe. The irony is, indeed, quite rich that the work of an aspiring mystic would trump the expertise of a woman who was an “expert in swech thyngys & good cownsel cowd 3euen” (Allen 42:16-17). While Margery Kempe’s Book serves as an example that mystical accounts do, indeed, happen outside monastic environs, Julian’s level of contemplation is significantly more advanced than the desirings of an unenclosed lay woman.

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The Friends of Julian of Norwich is just one such group that has formed in dedication of her pervasive influence.

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CHAPTER IV MARGERY KEMPE, WYNKYN DE WORDE, HENRY PEPWELL, AND THE COUNTERFEIT ANCHORESS OF FLEET STREET I haue ordeynd þe to be a merowr amongys hem [the people] for to haue gret sorwe þat þei xulde takyn exampil by þe for to haue sum litil sorwe in her hertys for her synnys þat þei myth þerthorw be sauyd. (The Book of Margery Kempe, Allen 186:12-16) Textual evidence cites the year 1436 as the date when work on The Book of Margery Kempe began in earnest, and the only remaining copy of the text, identified as the Salthouse manuscript (BL Addit 61823), is believed to have been transcribed some time in the middle of the fifteenth century. 60 Having lived a very controversial life, in which she was scorned by clerical and secular communities alike, Margery intended her narrative to serve as “a schort tretys and a comfortably for sinful wrecchys, wher-in þei may haue gret solas and comfort to hem and vndyrstondyn þe hy & vnspecabyl mercy of

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Hope Emily Allen provides detailed information regarding the dating of the Butler-Bowdon manuscript in her introduction to the EETS Book of Margery Kempe. Having consulted a Mr. J.A. Herbert to date the handwriting, Allen cites from a letter he wrote to her: “I had a good look at the Margery MS. today and came to the conclusion that I could not safely date it (on the handwriting) otherwise than towards the middle of the xv cent. […] I think it more probable that it was written before than after 1450” (Allen xxxiv). It appears as if the Butler-Bowdon manuscript may have been a direct copy of the one written by Margery’s scribe.

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ower soueryn Sauyowr Cryst Ihesu” (Allen 1:1-10) .61 Scholars may never know the extent to which the manuscript may have circulated, but one thing is certain: the fact that it was transformed into two early modern editions indicates that someone thought it had merit for later audiences.62 Medieval texts were frequently deployed for such reasons, but when the author is a woman and the topic of her text is spirituality, the portability entails a complex editorial process. The fact that Margery’s particular form of spirituality is a boisterous, performative one adds an even greater level of difficulty to the matter. More than fifty years separate the inaugural printing from the Salthouse manuscript, and a comparison between the two reveals that de Worde’s imprint is not a faithful reproduction of the manuscript since it is transformed into a treatise that promotes a quiet, submissive type of piety. Whereas scholarship on The Book of Margery Kempe is quite rich, in the past two decades only a small number of critics have focused their attention on A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon, Wynkyn de Worde’s 1501 edition of the text. 63 My contribution to this scholarly debate is unique in that I argue the sixteenthcentury revisions of the Book were undertaken after the advent of print and not before. Critics have imagined a redaction contemporaneous with the Salthouse manuscript for so long that it seems to have been accepted as truth, or at least no longer questioned. Sue Ellen Holbrook speculates in favor of Master Robert Springold, Margery’s confessor, as 61

My citations from The Book of Margery Kempe are from the Early English Text Society, O.S., 212 edited in 1940 by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen. As in the previous chapters, citations will be referenced by page number followed by line number. 62

For more information on the role of the Carthusians and the circulation of manuscripts see Michael G. Sargent’s “The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings.” In “Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren,” Vincent Gillespie argues that “the English Carthusians are more notable for carefully controlling and limiting the circulation of mystical books (the Cloud, Marguerite Porete, perhaps Margery)” (Gillespie 248, italics mine). 63

Hereafter The Book of Margery Kempe will be referred to as the Book and A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon as the Short Treatyse.

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the most likely candidate to have either produced or commissioned the abridgement in a now-lost manuscript. My resistance to her hypothesis is predicated on the difficulty Margery had trying to procure the help of one amanuensis, let alone the two who were required to complete her manuscript. Finding yet another scribe willing to tackle such a challenging revision would be, I maintain, be nearly impossible. Based on the redaction itself, it seems more likely that a later editor took up her manuscript afresh. As I will show, the Shorte Treatyse is so unlike its predecessor in both scope and presentation that historical distance seems to be the most logical reason for these differences. Rather than seeing the Shorte Treatyse as a print relic from the manuscript past, I view this text as what it presents itself as being—a newly redacted medieval text printed to guide early modern audiences in a tradition of inward spirituality. Producing a version of Margery Kempe that would appeal to later audiences would have required a complex process of refashioning, whether the redaction was undertaken during the Middle Ages or, as I argue in this chapter, in the early years of the 1500s. History has proven that while the written lives of women were not that unusual, their texts were cautiously handled by later audiences. In chapter three, I explain how and why Julian of Norwich’s Revelations was not printed until 1670—more than two hundred years after its composition. Margery Kempe’s Book went to print much sooner than Julian’s, but not without some drastic alterations. Clearly, the works of women were held to a stricter set of restrictions than those written by men, and those constraints become even tighter for the genre of mysticism. One of the distinguishing features of female biography, autobiography, or hagiography in the Middle Ages is the presence of the male scribe, who provides the woman with a greater sense of authenticity. As Janette Dillon

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explains, the relationship between a female mystic to her amanuensis is one of codependence: The woman has the vision, but it is the scribe who is responsible for helping her to express it in a form which will not incur charges of heresy. The scribe, more than anyone else, has to be certain that the visions are within the bounds of orthodoxy, since his own safety and reputation are bound up with the woman’s. (Dillon 137) Margery’s scribe is very well aware of this tradition, for textual evidence from the Book reveals that both he and Margery are acquainted with the works of Catherine of Siena, St. Bridget, Elizabeth of Hungary, and Marie d’Oignies.64 Many texts that adhered to this principle of codependence, as C. Annette Grisé notes, went to print at least once during the early modern era.65 In spite of the closeness Margery must have fostered with her amanuenses, their antagonistic relationships are documented throughout the entirety of the manuscript. Initially, her first scribe was “in purpose neuyr to a leuyd hir felyngys,” but her perseverance finally enables him to gain faith in her (Allen 152:33-4). I will thus demonstrate how the scribe’s caution affected the manner in which early modern redactors would approach her Book. Medieval figures of authority desperately tried to regulate her performative, aggressive piety but were unable. Early modern audiences, however, could reform her eccentric behavior to fit within acceptable norms—both spiritually and in regards to gender. Sue Ellen Holbrook maintains that “the printed version does not so much distort or marginalize Margery Kempe as it does transform or represent what she wrote,” but my analysis will show how the history of Margery is 64

St. Bridget had a long list of scribe-biographers, but her primary one was Alfonso of Jaën, and her Liber Celestis Revelaciones was translated into English by Thomas Gascoigne. Mary d’Oignies was dependent on Jacques de Vitry to write her story, and Raymond of Capua was Catherine of Siena’s confessor and biographer. 65

In her essay “Holy Women in Print: Continental Female Mystics and the English Mystical Tradition,” Grisé discusses the print history of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena.

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rewritten according to an ideology of suspicion evident in the attitudes of Margery’s first scribes. The redactor of the Shorte Treatyse pays careful attention to those moments when Margery’s expression of female piety borders on transgression. Instead of redeploying the same behavior that troubled medieval audiences, he expunges instances of Margery squabbling, crying, teaching and roaming, and thereby produces a tamer, more obedient example of what female piety should look like for a later reading audience. The inward, meditative form of worship fundamental to the Shorte Treatise thus showcases a broader form of early modern spirituality. The manuscript is one hundred and twenty four pages in length, and while books of this size were printed during the Tudor period, smaller-sized devotional handbooks were popular items in the London bookstalls. According to Holbrook, “de Worde had concentrated on the quarto format since the earliest years of his independent press;” thus, the treatise was reduced it to a mere seven pages of text—eight, counting a woodcut image of the crucifixion (Holbrook 40).66 The redactor makes no attempt to conceal the fact that the Shorte Treatyse is an abridgement, opening the treatise with the following colophon: “Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our lorde Jhesu cryst, or taken out of the boke of Margery kempe of lynn” (Allen 353, italics mine). For the careful reader, “taken out of” implies a systematic editorial process. Evidently, the redactor took his cue from the opening lines of the original MS and refashioned a product to fit that description: Here begynnyth a schort tretys and a comfortabyl for synful wrecchys, wher-in þei may haue gret solas and comfort to hem and vnderstondyn þe 66

Several of these quartos were the “Medytacyons of saynt Barnardi […], The XII Profytes of trybulacyon […], Thomas Betson’s Treatyse to dyspose men to be vertuously occupyed […], and Richard Rolle’s Devoute Medytacyons” (Holbrook 41).

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hy & vnspecabyl mercy of ower souereyn Sauyowr Cryst Ihesu. (Allen 1:1-4) One hundred and twenty four pages do not necessarily constitute a great tome, but seven pages certainly make the adjectival use of schort more appropriate. Whoever the extractor may have been, he clearly had an idea of what a devotional text should look like, and how to present it to later audiences.67 The text is not a biographical, spiritual narrative; it is more along the lines of a spiritual handbook that instructs the pious on correct models of meditation. As C. Annete Grisé notes, the “mystical tradition in print evinces a shift toward a more didactic focus, presenting shorter treatises more often, and ones that are more suitable for a general devout audience” (Grisé 83). In stating that the Short Treatyse is “taught by our lorde,” the extractor makes didacticism the overarching principle of the text; consequently, this act supplants the mystical tradition Margery’s scribe took great care to write her into. The year 1521 marks the appearance of yet another edition of the Short Treatyse, though it would not originate from de Worde’s press, nor would it stand alone. 68 Instead, Henry Pepwell includes it in a collection of writings by Richard of St. Victor, Saint Katherin of Seens [sic], and Walter Hilton. The stakes of placing Margery Kempe within the company of these esteemed writers are very high, for what power is there to be found in the name of Margery Kempe, a virtual nobody compared with two saints and one of the most popular mystical writers of the Middle Ages? The gendered politics of religious

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Holbrook asserts, “That [de Worde] himself made the extractions is impossible. We have no evidence that he edited his material in so extensive and authorial a way as the excerpted version required; not even Caxton had refashioned his publications in this way” (Holbrook 40). 68

Allyson Foster further emphasizes the importance of Margery in print: “That this redaction was printed twice within a span of twenty years indicates not only that early modern readers were familiar with Kempe and her Book, but also that the treatise was popular and deemed valuable in some way for those interested in seeking instruction in the practice of contemplation” (A. Foster 95).

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enclosure, which Margery’s ceaseless roaming challenged in the fifteenth century, provide the perfect opportunity to bring her more in line with the other writers in the anthology. Pepwell designates her as an “Ancress of Lynn,” leading scholars to believe “she was a worthy precursor to that other great mystic of East Anglia: Julian of Norwich” (Edmund Gardner 8, italics mine). The desire to construct an historical biography is quite tempting for later readers, but the fictitious, introverted mystic that Gardner imagines is as contradictory to the figure found in the Book as night is to day. In the Book, Margery’s inability to conform to normative, Christian ideologies leads her to be “gretly depysed & repreuyd for cawse sche wept so fast bothyn of þe monkys & prestys & of secular men” (Allen 27:19-21). When Pepwell’s edition confines Margery to the world of a fictional anchorage, he ultimately invalidates what should be viewed as a most extraordinary achievement for a woman of the medieval era. As a result, the Shorte Treatyse does not portray to later readers much of the “gret solas and comfort [of] þe hy & vnspecabyl mercy of ower souereyn Sauyowr Cryst Ihesu,” but rather, demonstrates the privilege a woman, completely devoid of sin and enclosed in an anchorage, receives (Allen 1:2-5). Margery’s displacement from her cultural milieu involves a complex paradox. Does she gain or lose authority in becoming an anchoress? On the one hand, she gains a greater sense of authority through her spiritual advancement. The greatest of Henry VIII’s religious upheavals were years away, and anchoritic enclosure was still extolled; in fact, the near proximity of Syon Abbey may have sparked interest in the mysterious anchoress of Lynn and increased early modern readership of the text. Conversely, by changing the text so dramatically, Pepwell exercises the power to accomplish what one of Margery’s earliest detractors had so fervently wished for. When Margery “rehers[es to a]

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monk a story of Scriptur” he tells her, “I wold þow wer closyd in an hous of ston þat þer sculd no man speke with þe” (Allen 27:30-33). Drastically abridged, and safely ensconced in an anchorage, Margery becomes the embodiment of patience, virtue, and piety that all careful readers should emulate. Christ’s instructions remind her, Yf thou wylt be hye wyth me in heuen kepe me always in thy mynde as moche as þu mayst & […]thynke always þat I syt in thy herte & knowe euery thought þat is therin both good and bade. (Allen 354:8) Early modern audiences may have been able to admire the ascetic lifestyle depicted in de Worde and Pepwell, but they would have been all too aware of the wide gap between the anchoritic and secular communities. Temptations, which the Book is replete with, can be understood by any devout individual, so in her manuscript instantiation Margery is careful to point out that it is only after she “askyd God mercy & forsoke hir pride, hir couetyse, & desyr þat sche had of þe worshepys of þe world, & dede grett bodyly penawnce” that she “gan to entyr þe wey of euyr-lestyng lyfe” (Allen 11:7-10).69 If anything, one would think that the autobiographical story of a reformed, self-professed sinner would be more appealing to a lay audience looking to cultivate a more virtuous manner of living in everyday circumstances. Nevertheless, the Shorte Treatyse’s editors seek to present a more sedate form of contemplation that, as Jennifer Summit claims, “seems calculated to appeal to a new devotional reader while seeks the benefits of

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Kathleen Ashley upholds the value inherent in the Book of Margery Kempe: “Margery’s autobiography symbolically enacts a solution to the cultural dilemma of how to achieve a spiritual validation while remaining an active member of mercantile society. This is not just a female problem, but the late medieval ideological dilemma for the bourgeoisie” (Ashley 374). This can be evidenced in the popularity of Walter Hilton and Nicholas Love’s works.

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indulgence without having to undergo the physical disciplines or actual pilgrimages that might have been expected of him or her at an earlier time” (Summit 133).70 How, then, did the redactor select the twenty-eight extracts that comprise the Shorte Treatyse? Carefully, although they are not very representative of the whole of Margery Kempe’s earlier and now-familiar Book. “Taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of lynn” is an accurate description, but taken out of context is much more appropriate (Allen 353). The profuse amount of marginalia found written by four different hands in the manuscript suggests that the manuscript, once housed in the Mount Grace Charterhouse, was read quite seriously by contemporary audiences.71 Sue Ellen Holbrook surmises that the redactor’s search for appropriate passages was more manageable on account of the abundant marginalia glossing the text. However, the majority of these annotations draw attention to some very unusual behavior that is intentionally left out of the printed edition. Gifted with the power of visions, Margery was quite the spectacle wherever she went, for she screams, she cries, and she writhes around on the ground when the Lord dallies with her, “wex[ing] al blew & al blo as it had ben colowr of leed” (Allen 105:20-21). Holbrook has established that “in twenty-two cases, red annotations (some incorporating earlier annotations in brown ink) are

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She continues to argue that there was definitely a political message to this tactic since it “wield[ed Margery] as an agent of inoculation against Lutheran heresy” (Summit 135). The irony is that the teachings of a woman constantly accused of heresy in her own time was being used to combat heretical behavior of the future. 71

See Karma Lochrie’s Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh for a discussion of the four annotators in greater detail. Lochrie discounts one of the sets of annotations since it “consists mainly of stylistic emendations” (207). Other critics who address these annotators are Sue Ellen Holbrook, “Margery Kempe and Wynkyn de Worde;” Kelly Parsons, “The Red Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempe and His Lay Audience;” Rebecca Schoff Erwin, “Early Editing of Margery Kempe in Manuscript and Print;” and Marta Cobb, “Orthodox Editing: Medieval Versions of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and The Book of Margery Kempe.”

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contiguous with the lines extracted” (Holbrook 36).72 As provocative as this evidence sounds, twenty-two instances is not an overwhelming majority; indeed, a close examination reveals that the compiler of the Shorte Treatyse ignores the cryings, wailings, and boisterous tears that caught the eye of the red-ink annotator. It would seem that the redactor avoids the marginalia in an attempt to promote a trend of devotional moderation. This is not surprising, considering the fact that that dependence on affective piety was began to wane in the early modern era, long before England’s final break with the Roman Church. In lieu of emphasizing devotional practices that push the boundaries of affective piety to its limit, the extractor emphasizes “a nontheatrical form of spirituality,” one that turns Margery into a quiet, submissive, and rarely speaking individual, and “the more she encreased in loue & in deuocyon, the more she encreased in sorrow & contrycyon, in lownesse & mekenesse” (Despres 155-6; Allen 355:13). As I suggested in the introduction to my project, the task of refashioning the Book was made even more problematic because of gender expectations. Though Julian of Norwich’s Revelations was not printed until 1670, her rhetoric carefully navigates the difficulties of being a female writer during a misogynistic period—“Botte God forbade that ye shulde saye or take it so that I am a techere” (Watson 75:35). Margery, on the other hand, steps over well-defined gender boundaries of the late Middle Ages as she went to sportyn hir in þe felde & men of hir owyn nacyon wyth hir þe whech sche informyd in þe lawys of God as wel as sche cowed—& scharply sche spak a-geyns hem for þei sworyn gret othys & brokyn þe comawndment of owr Lord God. (Allen 101:14-18, italics mine) When challenged with Pauline doctrine, Margery assumes an air of defensiveness, though she is loath to relent completely: “I preche not, ser, I come in no pulpytt. I use but 72

For a thorough analysis of every mark in the manuscript, see the appendices to Kelly Parsons’s essay, “The Red Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempe and His Lay Audience.”

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comownycacyon & good wordys, & þat wil I do whil I leue” (Allen 126:18-20, italics mine). Since the redactor excises any manifestations of unruliness and transforms Margery into a paradigm of virtue, it seems that he deliberately works to situate her within the parameters of acceptable female conduct for an early modern readership, most of whom may be women. Focusing on the internal and solitary meditations she has with Christ helps to promote the concept of interiority that is prevalent in the literature of the time; on the other hand, it perpetuates the tradition of silencing strong, independent women, especially when Christ instructs Margery, “Thou sholde not please me so well as thou dost whan þu art in scylence, & suffrest me to speke in thy soule” (Allen 353:5). This alteration reinforces a policy of devotion that not only esteems obedience, but obviates the mystical nature for which the Book is so well known. Of course, the subjective nature of mysticism lends itself to religious fanaticism as Margery frequently demonstrates: Her dalyawns was so swet so holy, & so devowt þat þis creatur myt not oftyn-tymes beryn it but fel down & wrestyd wyth hir body & mad wonderfyl cher & contenawns wyth boystows sobbyngys & gret plente of treys. (Allen 40:1-5) This is not the type of early modern editors wanted to advocate, especially since so many of Margery’s contemporaries were wary of it. Mystical elements are thus displaced by didactic moments, and Margery is demoted from being a loving spouse of Christ to an obedient child who “pleseth [Christ] right well” (Allen 356:18).73 Every passage in the printed editions accentuates a father-daughter relationship between the two; in fact, Margery is called Christ’s daughter a total of twenty-four times—nearly once in every 73

Margery’s spiritual marriage with Christ occurs in chapter thirty-five of the Book of Margery Kempe. Christ vows, “I take þe, Margery, for my weddyd wife, for fayrar, for fowelar, for richer, for powerar, so þat þu be buxom & bonyr to do what I byd þe do” (Allen 87:18-20).

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extract—and her voice, during the rare times it is heard, becomes subordinate to his.74 Two objectives are thus dealt with—Margery’s religious fanaticism is tamed, and these corrective measures promote a more private and passive model of contemplation that makes an early modern dating for the redaction more likely. As I turn to a close examination of the Shorte Treatyse, I would like to point out that the one commonality it shares with the Book is that it is drafted in a non-linear way, but one that is different than the MS: “Thys boke is not wretyn in ordyr, euery thing aftyr oþer as it wer don, but lych as þe mater cam to þe creatur in mend” (Allen 5:12-14).75 Rather than attempting to impose any sense of order to the non-sequentially organized Book, our compiler commences his edition with an episode from chapter fourteen, years after Margery has developed a close, spiritual relationship with Christ. This incident helps the redactor compose a didactic Margery Kempe, one who is later taught by Christ that the cultivation of piety can easily be accomplished through quiet contemplation since “payence is more worhte than miracles doyng” (Allen 357:23).76 As a woman who

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Sue Ellen Holbrook points out that “the [printed] treatise makes the voice of Christ dominate: eighteen percent of the words come from the woman [Margery] as direct or indirect speech; twenty-two percent are in the voice of the narrator; and sixty percent are uttered directly by Christ” (Holbrook 29, italics mine). The longest passage in the printed treatise, number eighteen, refers to Margery as “daughter” a total of six times. In ten instances, the word “daughter” is used to begin a new extract. 75

Sue Ellen Holbrook’s essay provides a list of the passages with their corresponding pages in “Margery Kempe and Wynkyn de Worde.” She further categorizes these passages into groups of five, “each with a focal motif” (Holbrook 28). These groupings are as follows: Group one, comprised of passages 1-10, emphasises continually thinking of Christ […] Group two, comprised of passages 11-15, develops weeping […] Group three, passages 16-19, focuses on the assurance of the reward she will have in heaven […] Group four, passages 20-21, dwells upon the pardon for her sins […] Finally, group five, passages 22-28, emphasises patient suffering of tribulation. (Holbrook 28-29) 76

Of all the excerpts chosen from the Book, this page receives a great deal of attention from the red-ink annotator. Several markings are worthy of note here. He has written the word “loue” twice in the margins, and the second “loue” has a box drawn around it. He also comments that “R. Meðlay was wont so to say” similar things. There is also a pillar drawn in the outer margin of the manuscript, and the words “suffer deth” are written in black ink.

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frequently embarks on pilgrimages, Margery’s freedom in the Book facilitates behavior of an “unnamable combination of orthodoxy and heterodoxy” (Dinshaw 146). Unfortunately, these travelings prove quite dangerous, and she endures many trials and tribulations from both foreigners and her fellow countrymen alike in the manuscript. Margery is well-known by many, but with this notoriety comes the constant threat of death. Thus, the inception of the Shorte Treatyse immediately presents readers with a woman in the midst of strife, who aspires to attain martyrdom: “She de1ired many tymes that her hede might be 1myten of with an axe vpon a blocke for the loue of our lorde Ihe1u” (Allen 353:1).77 The redactor does not necessarily misread the text, for the passage is a word-for-word transcription from the Book; however, it is presented in a different manner than originally written. If we focus our attention to the manuscript, we discover a woman in great fear for her life, not one who wants to rush to her death: Hyr þow[t] sche wold a be slayn for Goddys lofe, but dred for þe point of deth, & þerfor sche ymagyned hyr-self þe most soft deth, as hir thowt, for dred of impacyens, þat was to be bowndyn hyr hed & hir fet to a stoke & hir hed to be smet of wyth a scharp ex for Goddys lofe. (Allen 30:1-6, italics mine) The cause of Margery’s concern arises from the real fate she would have faced had she been found guilty of heresy. With the enactment of De heretico comburendo in 1401, heretics could be burnt at the stake, a harsh reality with which the manuscript’s earlier fifteenth-century audience would have been familiar. Margery is so terrified of the slow, painful death of burning that she would rather have her head “smet of.” The Shorte Treatyse transforms Margery’s fear and emphasizes a submissive form of spirituality; in lieu of being burned at the stake as a heretic, Margery prefers to embrace martyrdom. If

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From here on any reference to the Shorte Treatyse will be cited by page and paragraph number.

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Christ can die for the love of mankind, Margery would willingly die for her love of Christ. The event which precipitates Margery’s wish for this “most soft deth” occurs in the manuscript, when her husband deserts her. Verbally accosted by “bothyn of þe monkys & prestys & of secular men ner al a day boþe a-for-noon & aftyr-noon,” Margery is besieged by an angry mob: Sche went owt of þe monastery, þei folwyng & crying vp-on hir, “Þow xalt be brent, fals lollare. Her is a cartful of thornys redy for þe & a tonne to bren þe wyth.” And þe creatur stod wythowtyn þe 5atys at Cawntyrbery, for it was in þe euenyng, mech pepyl wonderyng on hir. Þan seyd þe pepyl,“Tak & bren hir.” And þe creatur stod stylle, tremelyng & whakyng ful sor in hit flesch wythowtyn ony erdly comfort. (Allen 27:20-22, 28:2835, italics mine) This is not the only occasion in Margery’s Book when she is forced to defend herself against the charges of heresy, and the gravity of this threat is further evidenced when her companions realize how dangerously close she comes to death at times.78 To return to the opening lines of the Shorte Treatyse, then, we see that Margery’s fears are taken entirely out of context. Christ’s assurance that Margery need not fear death is incorporated into the text, but the Shorte Treatyse omits the fact that she will not have to face the slow painful death reserved for Lollards and heretics: “& 3et schal no man sle the, ne fyer bren þe, ne watyr drynch þe, ne wynd deryn þe” (Allen 30:10-12). Martyrdom may have been “the chief criterion for English sanctity from the early Middle Ages through the Reformation,” but our extractor deploys this moment as one fit for instruction. Christ 78

Three chapters after this incident Margery is instructed to present herself to Archbishop Arundel. Before meeting his acquaintance, Margery receives a very hostile welcome to Lambeth. After admonishing several of Arundel’s clerks for swearing, a woman says “ful cursydly to hir in þis maner, ‘I wold þu wer in Smythfeld, & I wold beryn a fagot to bren þe wyth; it is a pety þat þow leuyst” (Allen 36:14-16). Unlike Mary Morse, I do not believe Margery’s concern is a form of “dramatic hyperbole” (Morse 30). There may have been few individuals actually sent to the fire during Margery’s lifetime, but the constant threats she receives from members of all society are probably not be a form of exaggeration.

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curtails her inappropriate desires and states, “I thanke the doughter that thou woldest dye for my loue […], & yet there shall no man slee the” (Despres 144; Allen 353:1). The juxtaposition of Margery’s imagined death with Christ’s actual one endorses a more internal manner of piety for early modern audiences. In Looking Inward, Jennifer Bryan argues “how the nebulous, highly prestigious, highly controversial concept of interiority could be variously defined and constructed for English readers” of the Middle Ages (Bryan 8). This drive for inwardness can be found in the Book, but it is constantly overshadowed by the histrionics of affective piety found in the manuscript; in the later printed texts, interiority is more about “intensity—‘depth’ of emotion,” than quiet, personal self-reflection (Bryan 37). Margery’s trajectory changes in the Shorte Treatyse, and the extractor culls these inwardly-directed moments, using didacticism to bring them to the foreground, which distances her from the more revolutionary meditations found in Julian’s Revelations. When Margery “ask[s] our lorde Ihesus cryste, how she sholde best loue him” he replies, “Haue mynde of they wyckednes and thynky on my goodness” (Allen 353:3-4). By reflecting on her manner of existence, Margery—and the reader of the text—is expected to remember Christ’s endurance of the Passion. In all, there are eight references to the Passion in the Shorte Treatyse, and while each one varies in its own special way, all eschew the violent imagery for which the Middle English mystical tradition is renowned.79 Some of the most unforgettable descriptions of the Passion can be found in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations and Richard Rolle’s Meditations on the Passion; likewise, the Book teems with horrific depictions of Christ on the cross: Sche [Margery] had so very contemplacyon in þe sygth of hir s[owle] as yf Crist had hangyn befor hir bodily eye in hys manhode. […] It was 79

These are paragraphs 2, 9, 11, 12, 15, 20, 25, and 26.

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granted þis creatur to beholden so verily hys precyows tendyr body, altorent & toryn wyth scorgys, mor ful of wowndys þan euyr was duffehows of holys, hangyng vp-on þe cros wyth þe corown of thorn up-on hys heuyd, hys blysful handys, hys tendyr fete nailed to þe hard tre, þe reuerys of blood flowing owt plentevowsly of euery member, þe gresly & grevows wownde in hys precyows side schedyng owt blood & watyr for hir lofe & hir saluacyon, þan sche fel down & cryed wyth lowed voys, wondyrfully turning & wresting hir body on euery side. (Allen 70:5-19)80 In the manuscript account, Margery’s enthusiasm for affective piety transcends the realm of private vision, producing physical manifestations that are often disturbing to her companions. When visiting Mount Cavalry on one of her pilgrimages, Margery wept & sobbyd so plentyvowsly as þow sche had seyn owyr Lord wyth hir bodily ey suffering hys Passyon at þat tyme […] sche fel down þat sche might not stondyn ne knelyn but walwyd & wrestyd wyth hir body, spredyng hir armys a-brode, & cryd wyth a lowed voys. (Allen 68:8-15) Of course, the stories of saints’ and martyrs’ lives that survive in the literature of the period abound with similar descriptions, but Margery was not a saint, nor was she a martyr—no matter how close she may have come to losing her life while on pilgrimage. Although her scribe will later reference The Prickynge of Love and Elizabeth of Hungary in defense of Margery’s tears of contrition, this is not the contemplative behavior envisioned by her favorites, Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle.81 Moreover, her conduct even defies the spiritual moderation proffered by another text that Margery cites familiarity with, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. For a woman who was out of bounds in her

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Julian of Norwich’s description of Christ’s bloodshed is likened to “the droppes of water that falle of an evesing of an house after a grete shower of raine, that falle so thicke that no man may nomber them with no bodely wit” (Watson 147:17-19). This vivid portrayal can be traced back to the Old English poem The Dream of the Rood. 81

See chapter sixty-two of the Book of Margery Kempe.

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medieval context, the Shorte Treatyse is able to render her transgressive brand of female spirituality invisible through the medium of print. Alternatively, Margery’s spirituality is consonant with Nicholas Love’s The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ in her vividly described Passion meditations. Oddly enough, this is a book that Margery fails to include the list of medieval works that her priest read to her: þe Bybyl wyth doctowrys þer-up-on, Seynt Brydys boke, Hyltons boke, Bone-ventur, Stimulus Amoris, Incendium Amoris, & swech oþer. (Allen 143:26-29) Carol Meale notes a “certain coyness [that] lingers around the question of whether or not Margery actually knew the Mirror” (Meale 45). Margery may very well mean the Mirror when she references “Bone-ventur” for, as my next chapter will explain, Nicholas Love claims that his treatise is derived from Bonaventure’s Meditationes. The popularity of Love’s work is evidenced by the sixty-four extant manuscripts, and although there is not concrete evidence of Margery’s familiarity with the dictates of his treatise, the Book is “a seamless rendition of the meditations enjoined by Nicholas Love in his Mirrour of the Blessyd Lyf of Jesu Christ” (Beckwith 81). As Margery advances into a deeper meditative state, she inserts herself into the action of the Passion, becoming a participant in the melee leading up to and following Christ’s death: And þe sayd creatur thowt þat sche ran euyr to & fro as it had be a woman wyth-owtyn reson, gretly desyryng to an had þe precyows body be hir-self a-lone þat sche myth a wept a-now in presens of þat precyows body, for hir thowt þat sche wolde a deyid wyth wepyng & mornyng in hys deth for loue þat sche had to hym. And as-swythe sche saw Seynt Iohn þe Euangelist, Ioseph of Aramathye, & oþer frendys of owr Lord comyn & wolde beryn owr Lordys body. (Allen 194:5-13)82

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Margery not only scripts herself present at Christ’s death, but also at his birth, playing the role of a nurse to both the Virgin Mary and Christ:

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Notwithstanding Beckwith’s analysis, Margery’s vision exceeds the prescriptive meditations of Love, who encourages his readers to imagine “þe processe of his [Christ’s] passione, takynge hede & making vs in mynde as present, to alle þat foloweþ” (Sargent 161:1-2). Because these visions are not representative of the drive for interiority the early modern redactor wanted to promote, he expunges the horror of Margery’s descriptions and focuses on Christ’s meekness. References to the Passion are subtle, and quickly glossed over. Several paragraphs into the Shorte Treatyse, Margery had grete wonder that our lorde wolde become man, & suffre so greuous paynes for her þat was so vnkynde a creature to hym. And than wyth grete wepynge she asked our lorde Ihesus how she myghte beste please hym. (Allen 354:11) Christ’s response? A word for word repetition of his previously offered advice that prompts early modern readers to imagine their own version of the Passion: “Haue mynde of thy wyckednes and thynke on my goodness” (Allen 354:11). However, as the extractor removes all instances of Margery’s wailing and writhing he allows her gift of weeping to play a prominent role. Five allusions are made to such episodes, and Christ even remarks, “I haue often tolde þe doughter, that thynkynge, wepynge, & hye contemplacyon is þe best lyf in erthe” (Allen 354:6). Undoubtedly, if Christ approves of “thynkynge, wepynge, & hye contemplacyon,” there should be no reason why early modern audiences should be shielded from such rituals. The pursuit of these three rituals can thus fostered by a liberal approach to Church doctrine. Anne Hudson notes that the late medieval teachings of Wycliffe “aimed at, and

And þan went þe creatur forth wyth owyr Lady to Bedlam & purchasyd hir herborwe euery nyght wyth gret reuerens, & owyr Lady was receyued wyth glad cher. Also sche beggyd owyr Lady fayr whyte clothys & kerchys for to swathyn in hir Sone whan he wer born, and, whan Ihesu was born, sche ordeyned bedding for owyr Lady to lyg in wyth hir blyssed Sone. (Allen 19:10-16)

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provided a coherent programme for, reformation, and while the Book is a product of that generation, readers of the text know that religious moderation is anathema to her (Hudson 508). In Margery’s world, no one wears a hairshirt more than, no one fasts as much as, and no one embarks on pilgrimage as often as she does. Nonetheless, there are moments when Christ’s advice to her anticipates the reform that would gain momentum in the sixteenth century. The redactor of the Short Treatyse hones in on this as early as the fourth excerpt, indicating that spiritual moderation is preferable to religious fervor: Doughter yf thou were the haberyon or þe here fa1tynge brede and water and yf þu 1ade1te euery day a thou1ande pater noster thou 1holde not plea1e me 1o well as thou do1t whan þu art in 1cylence and 1uffre1t me to 1peke in thy 1oule. (Allen 353:5) This lesson sounds vaguely similar to a passage found in the The Cloud of Unknowing. The author of that work, whose identity remains a mystery, is concerned about the lengths an individual will go to in order to obtain spiritual salvation. Despite the passage’s considerable length, it deserves quoting in full, particularly since it illustrates Margery’s obsessive spiritual practice: Fast þou neuer so mochel, wake þou neuer so longe, rise þou neuer so eerly, ligge þou neuer so harde, were þou neuer so scharp, 3e, & 3if it were leueful to do—as it is not—puttest þou oute þin y3en, cutest þou oute þi tonge of þi mouþ, stoppedest þou þin eren & þi nose neuer so fast, þou3 þou schere awei þi preue members & dedest al þe pine to þi body þat þou mi3test þink: alle þis wolde help þee ri3t nou3t. 6it wil stering & rising of synne be in þee. 6e, & what more! Were þou neuer so moche for sorrow of þi sinnes or of þe Passion of Criste, or haue þou neuer so moche mynde of þe ioies of heuen, what may it do to þee? Sekirly moche good, moche help, moche profite, & moche grace wol it get þee, bot in comparison of þis blinde steryng of loue, it is bot a litil. (Hodgson 38:16-39:9)83

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Although not found in the Shorte Treatyse, graphic details of sexual organs are included in chapter fiftynine of the Book of Margery Kempe. The incident does not involve the hypothetical eunuchry—or worse— denounced by the Cloud author, but Margery does recount being afflicted by terrible visions which involve

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Both the Cloud and the Shorte Treatyse recognize the perils of imprudent devotional practices. Margery comes nowhere near to enacting the corporal punishment that the Cloud author cites, but she does entertain some unusual ways to show her love of Christ: I wold be layde naked vpon an hurdle for thy loue al men to wonder on me and to ca1t fylth and dyrt on me: and be drawen fro town to towne euery day of my lyfe tyme yf þu were plea1ed therby, & no m7nes 1oule hyndred, thy wyll be fulfilled and not myne. (Allen 356:19) While her eagerness may seem shocking, it is predicated on a series of conditions—if it would please Christ, if it would not be detrimental to anyone’s spiritual being, followed by the imperative, “thy wyll be fulfilled and not myne.” The implication serves to remind readers of similar plea Christ made while in the garden of Gethsemane: “Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). Piety can be a good thing, provided it does not morph into religious fanaticism. The redactor of the Shorte Treatyse allows Margery to consider such demonstrations of performative piety, but she is quickly returned to the world of silent contemplation. De Worde’s and Pepwell’s treatises were not printed because a text conveniently resurfaced from the past that fit the changing religious practices of the early modern era. Someone with a later spiritual sensibility carefully selected passages that accentuate “the decline of local support for traditional religion [that] appears to have commenced to a limited extent before 1529” (Whiting 222). The didactic focus of the Shorte Treatyse deploys Margery’s enslavement to ritual as an opportunity to legitimate a longstanding

Verily dyuers men of religyon, preystys, & many oþer, bothyn hethyn & Cristen comyn be-for hir syght þat sche myth not enchewyn hem ne puttyn hem owt of hir syght, schewyng her bar membrys vn-to hir. (Allen 145:11-14, italics mine)

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commitment to religious reserve. Even Walter Hilton warns that too much action leads one to fall into the trap of hypocrisy: He that dooth al the good deedes that he can, as in fastynge, wakynge, werynge of the heire and alle othere suffrynge of bodili penaunce, or dooth alle the outeward werkes of merci to his evene Cristene, or ellis inward as praiynge, wepynge, sighhynge, and thenkynge: yif he reste ai in hem, and lene so mykil to hem […] he is not meke inow. (Bestul, Scale II, 1051-57, italics mine) In a world that values tangible signs of religious devotion, though, the cultivation of meekness is difficult to assess. Christ tells Margery this numerous times in the Book, but the treatise is so long that her outlandish behavior eclipses these teachings. The instructive nature of the Shorte Treatyse, combined with its brevity, foregrounds Christ’s desire for Margery to temper her spiritual exercises: Doughter for to byd many bedes it is good to them that cannot better do and yet it is not profyte. But it is a good way towarde perfeccyon. For I tell the doughter they that be grete fa1ters and grete doers of pena8ce they wolde that it 1holde be holde the be1te lyf. And they that gyue them to many deuocyons they wolde haue that þe best lyfe. And tho that gyuen moche alme11e they wolde that it were holden the best lyf. And I haue often tolde þe doughter that thynkynge, wepynge, and hye c2templacyon is þe best lyfe in erthe and thou 2halt haue more meryte in heuen for one yere thynk3ge in thy mynde than for an hondred yere of prayeng wyth thy mouth. (Allen 353-4:6, italics mine) This is not to say that reciting the rosary, fasting, uttering devotions, giving alms, and praying are detrimental and need not be performed. Quite the contrary; Christ claims it is “a good way towarde perfeccyon”—just not the only way (Allen 353:6). The negative aspect of these exercises is that people have the tendency to forgo other important precepts in their quest to obtain “þe be1te lyf” (Allen 353:6). It takes a very faithful individual to abandon these routines and embrace the inwardly-driven philosophy of “thynk9ge in thy mynde,” and not “prayeng wyth thy mouth” (Allen 354:6). Acts of

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thinking and high contemplation, though, are abstract and not easily quantifiable. Indeed, the Shorte Treatyse’s emphasis of this is very progressive thinking that shows the longlasting influence of Wycliffism and Lollardy. Perhaps it is a bit too ahead of its time, and Christ explains that Margery “wylte not beleue me, for thou wylte byd mane bedes” (Allen 354:6). Early sixteenth-century readers were embracing the inward, meditative devotion promoted by the Shorte Tretyse, but they were still attracted to physical objects to show their adherence to the Church. Robert Whiting claims that one of the “component[s] of medieval religion that remained important to many English people on the eve of the Reformation was the veneration of sacred sites and of physical or material relics” (Whiting 218). Both sixteenth-century editions of the Shorte Treatyse become even more critical of the Church in the final two excerpts. Rather than minimizing the importance of acts such as fasting, alms-giving, and reciting the rosary, some very harsh criticism is directed at Church leaders. Compared to the full-length Book the anti-clericalism is minimal, but its position at the end of the Shorte Treatyse makes it all the more remarkable; it is even more inexcusable since the censure originates from the mouth of Christ.84 When Margery protests that his secret counsels should be revealed to “relygyous men & to prestes,” he tells her, Nay nay doughter, for þat I loue be1t þat they lou not, & þat is 1hames, repreues, 1cornes, & de1pytes of þe people, & therefore they 1hall not haue this grace, for doughter, he that dredeth þe 1hames of this worlde may not parfyghtly loue god. (Allen 357:27-28)

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Sarah Beckwith claims that the anti-clerical theme of the Book of Margery Kempe “is always put in the mouth of Christ,” but that is not always the case (Beckwith 96). Though she must be careful of the way she phrases her chastisement, Margery expresses her disapproval of many Church officials.

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Similar to the opening passage of the Shorte Treatyse, this is a very radical abbreviation. In the Book Christ’s entire rebuke reads thus: Nay, nay, dowtyr, for þat thing þat I lofe best þei lofe not, & þat is schamys, despitys, scornys, & repreuys of þe pepil, & þerfor xal þei not haue þis grace. For dowtyr, I telle þe he þat dredith þe schamys of þe world may not parfytely louyn God. And, dowtyr, vnder þe abyte of holynes is curyd meche wykkydnes. Dowtyr, 4yf þu sey þe wikkydnes þat is wrowt in þe werld as I do, þu schuldist haue gret wondyr þat I take not vttyr veniawns on hem. (Allen 158:23-31, italics mine) Opposition to the Church at any point in history was hazardous and was handled with varying degrees of tolerance. These anti-clerical sentiments may have been borne out of Wycliffism, but they were coming to a head under the rule of Henry VIII. The disappearance of the hallmark characteristics of breadth, scope, and originality in the Book suggests the long-lasting effects of Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions on the circulation of vernacular writings which, as Anne Hudson asserts, were “still in force in the 1520s” (Hudson 484).85 Although Margery’s behavior is more within the bounds of orthodoxy than she is in the Book, the Shorte Treatyse’s minimal print history indicates that even a generous amount of corrective measures was not enough to guarantee success. De Worde does not venture another printing of the Shorte Treatyse, and when Pepwell does—twenty years later—he refashions her as an anchoress. This may have been an attempt to bring Margery more into line with the other writers in his collection—much like the scribe of Westminster Cathedral Treasury MS 4 does with Julian of Norwich’s

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Nicholas Watson argues that “from a few years after 1410 until the sixteenth century there is a sharp decline both in the quantity of large theological works written in the vernacular and in their scope and originality” (Watson, “Censorship,” 832). For more information see “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.” Kathryn Kerby-Fulton takes a different stance about Arundel’s Constitutions. For her, the Constitutions in no way act as “a threat or an obstruction to vernacular writing, but more as a background security measure” (Kerby-Fulton 260).

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Revelations—but even this metamorphosis does not fully expunge the dangers surrounding the personal, interior brand of spirituality that Margery propounds. De Worde was an innovative printer, though, and while the body of the Shorte Treatyse avoids lengthy narrative on the Passion, a single woodcut image was inserted to help fill that void. As readers flip to the very last page of the Shorte Treatyse, they are faced with a crucifixion image that originates from the Gospel of John.86

Figure 4.1: Wynkyn de Worde’s Shorte Treatyse, STC 14924

The inclusion of this woodcut demonstrates that de Worde was more artistically involved in his work than Henry Plomer alleges since, intentional or not, it enhances the meaning 86

Of the four Gospels, John is the only one to include the description of a male disciple present at the crucifixion who accompanies Mary: “Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her” (John 19.26).

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of the book for a devotional reader. In the foreground of the image, Christ hangs on the cross, two men on either side of him. There is a large crowd of onlookers, and one of the guards is shown piercing the right side of Christ’s breast with his lance. In the bottom left-hand corner of the image, John consoles the bereft Virgin Mary. The advice found in the Shorte Treatyse is easily transferable to anyone consulting it, but it does not offer any specifics of how and what to imagine when one “thynke1t on [Christ’s] pa11yon” (Allen 357:26). Woodcuts can often be used to help reinforce a reader’s engagement with the text, for a visual image has significantly more power to convey the import than mere words. More importantly, for buyers who might not have enough time or skill to devote to the practice of reading, a simple flip to the back of the quarto could provide them with the benefits gained from a studied perusal. As Sue Ellen Holbrook contends, we must “allow de Worde’s print of A shorte treatyse of contemplacyon to contribute to our view of Margery Kempe,” but considering the difference of the print edition from the manuscript version, I would ask how, and in what cultural context are we supposed to interpret the radical transformation of Margery Kempe through the medium of print (Holbrook 27)? To answer this question I return the epigraph found at the beginning of this chapter: I haue ordeynd þe to be a merowr amongys hem [the people] for to haue gret sorwe þat þei xulde takyn exampil by þe for to haue sum litil sorwe in her hertys for her synnys þat þei myth þerthorw be sauyd. (Allen 186:1216) The ability for Margery Kempe to make her way into the world of print should be held as triumph for a woman of the Middle Ages, but de Worde and Pepwell distort her reflection with their fabrication of medieval piety. The paradoxes involved in the removal of Margery from the public sphere and her installment in a fictional anchorage are thus quite

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complex. My analysis proposes that the strong, didactic focus of the Shorte Treatyse shows how the redaction must have been commissioned during the time of its first printing. De Worde may have publicized its abbreviated format, but it is unlikely that new readers either noticed or cared about the unfaithfulness of this abridgment to its much lengthier ancestor; at least, not until the discovery of the Salthouse manuscript in 1934. Rather than fulfilling the expectations of the scholarly community, the full-length manuscript was ultimately a great disappointment; even Hope Emily Allen discounted Margery as a “minor mystic”—an hysteric who was “petty, neurotic, vain, illiterate, physically and nervously over-strained; devout, much-travelled, forceful and talented” (Allen lxiv). That such high expectations were anticipated can be linked to the power attached to the words ‘mystic’ and ‘anchoress,’ particularly in light of Edmund Gardner’s hypothesis that Margery “was a worthy precursor to that other great mystic of East Anglia: Julian of Norwich” (Edmund Gardner 8). If these early modern editions failed to sell, they were nevertheless successful with creating a version of Margery Kempe that was long lasting for generations of medievalists. The Book’s earliest scholars were so influenced by the expectations of printed editions that they allowed Margery’s sixteenthcentury appearance to mar their appreciation of the manuscript. Texts are refashioned for diverse purposes—before and after the advent of print—and the “adaptability of female mystical materials” demonstrates how early modern reconstructions of Margery Kempe can produce exceptional opportunities for scholars of many diverse fields (Grisé 94). The “textual harassment” Margery’s Book endured at the hands of de Worde and Pepwell may have kept her identity a secret for several hundred years, but the manuscript

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did not exist without any form of devoted readership.87 As luck would have it, enclosing Margery in a “hous of ston”—the Carthusian monastery of Mount Grace—would be the most advantageous thing to happen to both her and her Book (Allen 27:32). The profuse amount of marginalia shows approval for her highly affective, highly performative behavior, and four separate annotations claim that two of the monastery’s own monks, Richard Methley and John Norton, experienced similar bouts of weeping and roaring.88 When all is said and done, then, perhaps Margery has the last laugh on all who try to contain or direct her spirituality, for as she famously claims, “’It is ful mery in Heyn’” (Allen 11:27-28).

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The idea of “textual harassment” can be found in Robert Hanning’s “’I Shal Finde it in a Maner Glose’: Textual Harassment in Medieval Literature.” 88

For more information on the red-ink annotator see Kelly Parson’s “The Red Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempe and His Lay Audience” and Karma Lochrie’s Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh. Parson provides a detailed list of all the red-ink annotator’s marginalia and corrections.

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CHAPTER V THE MIRROR OF THE BLESSED LIFE OF JESUS CHRIST: NICHOLAS LOVE AND HIS MIXED AUDIENCE Memorandum quod circa annum domini Milesimum quadrigentisimum decimum, originalis copia huius libri, scilicet Speculi vite Christi in Anglicis presentabatur Londoniis per compilatorem eiusdem N Reuerendissimo in Christo patri & domino, Domino Thome Arundell, Catuarie Archiepiscopo, ad inspiciedum & debite examinandum antequam fuerat libere communicata. Qui post inspeccionem eiusdem per dies aliquot retrandens ipsum librum memorato eiusdem auctori proprie vocis oraculo ipsum in singulis commedauit & approbauit, necnon & auctoritate sua metropolitica, vt pote catholicum, puplice communicandum fore decreuit & mandauit, ad fidelium edificacionem, & hereticorum suie lollardum confutacionem. (The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, Sargent 7:9-20) Composed in a world where the use of the vernacular in religious texts was tantamount to heresy, Nicholas Love’s 1409 The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is a translation of the early fourteenth-century Meditationes Vitae Christi. The Meditationes Vitae Christ is commonly, though erroneously, attributed to Bonaventure, and it is only in the past century that scholars have concluded “Johannes de Caulibus was responsible for the whole of the Meditationes” (Sargent xv).89 This misattribution dates

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In Sargent’s introduction to the 1992 edition of his Mirror, he claims the original scholar who made this discovery was Benedetto Bonelli

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back to Love’s Attende lector passage where he explains which passages are original to the Meditationes Vitae Christ, and which are his own elaborations: Note, reader of the following book written in English, that where the letter “N” is placed in the margin, the words are added by the translator or compiler beyond those in the Latin book of the Meditation of the Life of Christ written, according to common opinion, by the venerable doctor Bonaventure. And when it returns to the narrative and words of that doctor, then the letter “B” is inserted in the margin, as will be readily apparent to whoever reads or examines this book of The Mirror of the Life of Christ. (Sargent, 1992 Scale edition, xxx) 90 The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ may be rooted in medieval ideology, but Love’s decision to recontextualize the Meditationes as a text for “lewde men & women & hem þat bene of simple vndirstondynge” demonstrates a recognition that the needs of the public were not being met by the Church; in fact, he specifically states that his translation of the Meditationes was influenced by “þe prayer of some deuout soules” (Sargent 10:67; 10:10-17).91 Instead of a simple recirculation of an earlier meditative model, Love’s adaptation of what was thought to be a traditional text (Bonaventure) empowers late medieval worshippers’ burgeoning interest in a private, more individualized religiosity. This inwardly-focused spirituality would continue to attract new readers, especially once in the course of his examination of the canon of the works of Bonaventure. Noting that the Meditationes incorporates material written after Bonaventure’s death in 1274, […] Bonelli argued in 1767, in his Prodromus ad Opera Omnia S. Bonaventure, and again in 1774 […] that the Meditationes Vitae Christi was not properly to be ascribed to Bonaventure, but to the author of a set of meditations on the life of Christ who was known to have been a friar of San Gemignano, Johannes de Caulibus. (Sargent, 1992 Mirror edition, xvi) 90

The following is the passage in its original Latin: Attende lector huius libri prout sequitur in Anglico Scripti, quod vbicumque in margine ponitur litera N verba sunt translatoris siue compilatoris in Anglicis preter illa que inseruntur in libro scripto secundum communem opinionem a venerabili doctore Bonauentura in Latino de meditacione vite Jesu Christi. Et quando peruenitur ad processum & verba eiusdem doctoris inseritur in margine litera B, prout legenti siue intuenti istum librum specula vite Christi lucide poterit apparere. (Sargent 7)

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Herafter Love’s text will be referred to as the Mirror, and the Meditationes Vitae Christi will be shortened to the Meditationes.

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England began to embrace the concept that an interior relation to the divine need not be mediated by clergy—values that would subsequently launch the Reformation. The chapter will thus explain how Love’s transition away from the influence of affective piety, a decidedly medieval form of devotion, anticipates a didactic, inward model of devotion that early modern readers would embrace. New devotional tracts were being written in the early years of the sixteenth century, but popular texts from the not so distant past were just as important—if not more so—to persons trying to maintain the faith. Nine editions of the Mirror were printed between 1484 and 1530; two were printed by Caxton, five by Wynkyn de Worde, and two by Pynson.92 Despite Michael Sargent’s assertion that “the Mirror identified itself so well with pre-Reformation values that since that time, it has nearly disappeared from sight,” the text did not entirely lose its readership after England’s break with Rome (Sargent ix). Three editions of the Mirror were printed by recusants in the early years of the seventeenth century. The first half of this chapter examines how the Mirror’s amazing portability is dependent on the fact that Love straddles medieval and early modern religious practices. Orthodoxy was equally important to early modern audiences, and Love’s traditional spirituality makes the Mirror all the more appealing to readers who faced the growing religious tensions about Church reform. The anti-Lollard focus of the Mirror could easily have rendered the treatise obscure for later audiences; however,

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Caxton prints his editions in 1484 (STC 3259) and 1490 (STC 3260). The date of Caxton’s first printing in 1484 has been confirmed utilizing paper analysis and by the use of Caxton’s “newly-acquired text-type no. 5” (Hellinga 145). De Worde’s editions are as follows: STC 3261 in 1494, STC 3263.5 in 1507, STC 3264 in 1517, STC 3266 in 1525, and STC 3267 in 1530. Pynson’s Mirror was released in 1494 (STC 3262), and 1506 (STC 3263). A.I. Doyle notes that each particular edition “must have run to some hundreds of copies and possibly, in view of their frequency which points to its commercial success, up to a thousand or more each, although only one of two, or not more than a handful, of each are now known” (Doyle 164).

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Lollardy was still a threat during the early sixteenth century. Robert Whiting explains that Lollard “survival on the eve of the Reformation was noted by [an] Italian visitor, who observed in c.1500 that ‘many’ of the English people held ‘various opinions concerning religion’” (Whiting 223). This chapter will also discuss how religious threats from outside England’s borders heighten the universal appeal of the Mirror’s battle against heresy. A highly orthodox text, the Mirror upholds fundamental religious traditions espoused by the Church. Indeed, the frequency and manner in which Love reminds readers to “take hede of […] þe gronde of holy chirch” echoes Julian of Norwich, who “in all thing [believes] as holy church precheth and techeth” (Sargent 78:17-18; Watson 157:17-18).93 As an official of the Church, Love takes the battle against heresey quite seriously, seeking to strengthen the Church’s hold on parishioners. As Love looks forward in his reformulation of private, devotional practices, he harmonizes the desires of English society with the foundations of the Church by providing a didactic framework to his meditations. In doing so, Love simultaneously empowers the reader and advocates clerical supervision—a methodology that is rarely seen and successful in the literature of the medieval era. Readers are encouraged to foster a meditative practice, but his caveats to “go no ferþer” attempt to limit the emotional boundaries of the reader’s speculation (Sargent 23:38-39). The watchful eye of the narrator is further reinforced by the presence of Archbishop Arundel’s approbatio, whereby the Mirror was “commanded by his metropolitan authority that it be published universally for the edification of the faithful

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My citations are from Michael Sargent’s 2004 edition of the Mirror. As with other chapters, citations are given with page number followed by line number.

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and the confutation of heretics or lollards” (Sargent xv). Here I will argue that the printed editions' faithfulness to the manuscript can be traced back to Arundel’s imprimatur. Sixteenth-century editions of the Mirror may have maintained the integrity of the text, but its seventeenth-century manifestations demonstrate how drastically the religious context had changed. Catholicism was no longer the religion of England, and the devout were even more dependent on private, interior forms of spirituality. I will therefore conclude this chapter with an analysis of the three extant seventeenth-century editions of the Mirror. England’s rich Catholic past had been replaced by Protestantism, and many of the devout had either fled the country or were practicing the Catholic faith in secret; consequently, Boscard’s edition of 1609, STC 3268, epitomizes the appearance of a secretly printed text. Individuals engaged in the recusant book trade often “suppressed the names of authors and printers and sometimes even the dates of publication;” this is certainly true of the 1609 Mirror, as its title-page indicates (Allison and Rogers 120).94

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Allison explains that Boscard’s “work can be identified from the types and ornaments [he] used, for these also appear in the books [he] printed for the foreign market which have [his] imprints” (Allison, “Heigham,” 231).

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Figure 5.1: Title page of STC 3268

Whereas Caxton, de Worde, and Pyson maintain the integrity of Love’s authorship of the Mirror, Boscard attributes the entire treatise to Saint Bonaventure. As noted previously, Love himself misattributes the Meditationes in the Attende lector passage—his initial address to readers. Boscard simply follows Love’s lead, but in so doing, he also affirms a continuing desire to establish a long, recognizable lineage for the type of spirituality propounded in the Mirror. Future editors will likewise assume Bonaventuran authorship, erasing any indication of Love’s involvement with the Mirror. Who would have thought that something so simple as authorial recognition would completely sever Love’s name from his adaptive translation?

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By the 1620s, the conditions of the book trade were more favorable for Catholic propaganda; as a consequence, three more copies of the Mirror were printed in a relatively short amount of time. A.F. Allison claims that between 1622 and 1625, “customs officials were less vigilant; books could be smuggled into the country more easily; and booksellers could stock them without undue fear of being penalized” (Allison, “Heigham,” 234). While this laxity was short-lived, it enabled the Mirror to be transformed into a text unlike any of the later reprints discussed in this study. In 1622, more than ten years after Boscard’s edition, the Mirror was once again in print. This time its publisher was John Heigham, one of “the most important figure[s] in the English book trade” (Allison, “Heigham,” 232). The title-page to this edition, STC 13034, indicates that it is a second edition, but no records exist of Heigham’s initial printing.95 His third and final edition of the Mirror, STC 13035, is a reprint, so the focus of my discussion will be STC 13034. For matters of scholarly interest, though, I provide images of the title pages of both STC 13034 and STC 13035:

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As you can see, the EEBO copy of the text from Cambridge library is badly damaged; however, most of the information is still discernable. Rogers’ edition of this text, Saint Bonaventure: The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus, has a complete copy of the title page.

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Figure 5.2: Title page of STC 13034

Figure 5.3: STC 13035 title page

In these last two editions, the treatise is completely reworked as a Bonaventuran product with a seventeenth-century perspective. By attributing this text to Bonaventure, Heigham redeploys his Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in an entirely different manner than sixteenth-century editions. By attributing the treatise to Bonaventure, Heigham virtually eliminates the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century history of the text. Consequently, seventeenth-century readers have no idea that the treatise was once reproduced as a means to satisfy fifteenth-century lay demands for more spiritual autonomy. Moreover, Heigham renames the text The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, deletes passages that link his updated edition of the treatise with its

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late-medieval heritage, and augments the text “with Twentie-five whole Chapters: each one enriched with manie most excellent and diuine Documents” (Rogers, title page). Boscard’s 1609 Mirror contains some minor additions as well; in fact, their phrasing is so similar to Heigham’s augmentations in STC 13034 that Heigham may very well have been responsible for compiling STC 3268. In order to understand the complexities behind these much later manifestations, we must first examine the Mirror’s first printings. One of the continuities between late medieval and early modern interests is an interest in auctoritas and, as Alistair Minnis claims, “For a work to have ‘intrinsic worth’, a literary work had to conform, in one way or another, with Christian truth; an auctor had to say the right things” (Minnis 10). From St. Augustine to St. Bernard, St. Gregory to St. Jerome and, more importantly, St. Bonaventure, the Mirror is all-encompassing treatise of patristic authority and truth. Establishing this auctoritas bolsters the power of Love’s authorial status, and his orthodox framework builds a library of vernacular treatises for all interested readers. Even Love is captivated by the wide range of devotional manuals currently available for those individuals seeking to supplement their spirituality with textual materials: Nowe boþe men & women & euery Age & euery dignite of this worlde is stirid to hope of euery lastyng lyfe. Ande for þis hope & to þis entent with holi writte also bene wryten diuerse bokes & trettes of deuoute men not onelich to clerkes in latyne, but also in Englyshe to lewde men & women & hem þat bene of simple vndirstondyng. (Sargent 10:2-7) With his translation of the Meditationes, Love situates himself within an existing tradition of writers that guarantees the Mirror’s longevity. Moreover, Love engages in authorial conversation with contemporary literary figures, and if the reader feels inclined to gain more knowledge from other sources he can

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loke to þe tretees þat þe worþi clerk & holi lyuere Maister Walter Hilton þe Chanon of Thurgarton wrote in English by grete grace & hye discrecion & he shall fynde þere as I leue a sufficient scole & a trew of alle þees. (Sargent 122:39-42, italics mine) In my second chapter, I discuss how influential the works of Hilton were for early modern audiences. Since the Scale of Perfection was not printed until ten years after the Mirror, perhaps Love’s appraisal of Hilton caught the eye of the King’s mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, who would subsequently ask de Worde to print the Scale. While elite patronage is impossible to prove, it is clear that Love’s text was successful enough to recommend other medieval texts for printing. Love’s quest to empower the lay reader’s pursuit of a private, individualized religiosity was not without problems, however. Love intends the Mirror for “lewde men & women & hem þat bene of simple vndirstondyng,” but a layman with limited literacy may not have been able to read it (Sargent 10:6-7). Printers, perhaps in trying to capitalize on their revolutionary trade, were able to appreciate the fact that “individual readers interpret literature within the framework of their textual communities, each with its own cultural authorities, reading strategies, and levels and definitions of competence” (Bartlett 2). In order to resolve this dilemma, Caxton, de Worde, and Pynson guide a less competent reader through the pages of text by including woodcut images. No matter the quality of the woodcut image itself, early printers included some of the most iconographic images in their editions of the Mirror, and a meditative practice could be fostered by holding a book without actually having to read it.96 These woodcuts not only

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The following woodcuts were common to all versions of the Mirror: Christ’s nativity, the Epiphany, the depiction of Mary Magdalene washing Christ’s feet, the transfiguration of Christ on the hill, the harrowing of hell, and Christ’s ascension. The crucifixion scene described in my Margery Kempe chapter is found on de Worde’s 1494 incipit of the Mirror. This image is also included in the Fifteen Oes, Liber Festialis,

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function as the spiritual guidance that Love recommends, but they also summarize the content of each chapter in the text. For instance, in chapter forty-three, “Of þe crucifying of our lord Jesu at þe sextet houre,” all sixteenth century editions show an image of Christ being nailed to the cross. Caxton’s imprints of 1484 (STC 3259), 1490 (STC 3260), and de Worde’s edition of 1494 (STC 3261) have the identical illustration. Pynson’s two editions of 1494 and 1506 (STC 3262 and 3263) have a slightly different image, but the same woodcut is used for both texts. In de Worde’s next editions, STC 3263.5 (1507), STC 3264 (1517), and STC 3266 (1525), there is a slightly different crucifixion scene than the Mirror’s first three copies. Finally, de Worde’s last Mirror edition, STC 3267 (1530), changes the crucifixion scene again.

Figure 5.4: STCs3259-3261

Figure 5.5: STCs 3262-3263

Abbaye of the Holy Ghost, Mons Perfectionis, Ars Moriendi, Legenda Aurea, XII Profytes of Trybulacyon, and the Ordynarye of Crystyanyte to name a few.

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Figure 5.6: STCs 3263.5-3266

Figure 5.7: STC 3267

As the nascent years of print burgeon, so do the appearance and extravagance of woodcuts. While de Worde holds the monopoly on Mirror publications, he also holds the record for the most woodcut blocks, increasing in number from thirty-one in his first edition, STC 3261, to an astonishing forty-one in his final printing, STC 3267. Perhaps one of the most intriguing and widely utilized woodcut images of all editions, though, is one that depicts the presentation of a book by the author to his superior. Edward Hodnett traces this image to St. Bonaventure’s presentation of Speculum Vitae Christi, but Caxton’s inclusion of this woodcut in his 1490 edition of the Mirror is undoubtedly meant to portray Nicholas Love and Archbishop Arundel.97

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Although the first nine pages are missing from Caxton’s first edition, STC 3259, Hodnett asserts that this woodcut was more than likely “present in the first edition” (Hodnett 141). Michael Sargent follows suit with the early printers of the Mirror by including the same woodcut as the front cover artwork for his translation of the Mirror.

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Figure 5.8: Presentation of the text, STC 3261

This woodcut image reinforces my contention that the stability of the Mirror’s sixteenthcentury circulation is directly linked to Arundel’s approbatio. Printers held the imprimatur in such regard that they were loath to expunge it for fear of diminishing the remarkable history of the text. The only texts missing this passage are STCs 3259, 3262, and 3263.5, but its absence can most likely be attributed to missing leaves from the opening pages of the text, a commonality of all three. The work of book historians has established that Caxton was not a printer who made significant alterations, and his 1490 reprint, STC 3260, is a “page-for-page reprint […] with the intention of achieving a careful reproduction of the first edition” (Hellinga 149). If this is true, and there seems to be little reason for doubt, why would Caxton omit Arundel’s imprimatur in his very first edition of the Mirror only to include it six years later in a reprint?98 De Worde’s first

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Caxton’s 1484 edition of the Mirror is missing both opening and closing pages of the text. In all, there is approximately a difference of twenty pages between his two printings.

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edition—with Arundel’s license—appeared in 1494, and the level of faithfulness he maintained with his predecessor’s editions cannot explain why his next printing of 1507 would exclude the approbatio, particularly since Richard Pynson, de Worde’s competitor, included it in his second edition of 1506. That de Worde’s next three editions—STCs 3264, 3266, and 3267—contain the endorsement reinforces my conjecture that the original printings must have included this critical passage. It seems more than probable to state that Arundel’s approval guaranteed uniformity after the introduction of printing. That being said, scholars must bear in mind the long-lasting effects of Arundel’s Constitutions, or at least the enduring legacy of the power ascribed to his name. Interior forms of spirituality were not necessarily frowned upon by powerful ecclesiasts, provided that such autonomy ultimately deferred the worshipper to institutional guidance. Love’s presentation of the Mirror is a didactic tour de force, especially in light of Archbishop Arundel’s association with it. If, as Nicholas Watson suggests, the promulgation of the Constitutions inhibited the creation of new and innovative texts of spiritual devotion, Arundel’s endorsement opened windows of opportunity for later readers and writers who were concerned about orthodox practices.99 Carthusians may have been cloistered away from active involvement with the medieval community but, as Jennifer Bryan observes, “their lonely labors of writing and copying—their silent ‘preaching’—definitively marked England’s textual culture and connected them to a wider literate community” (Bryan 17). Ironically, Love’s Carthusian lifestyle cultivated a

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For more information on Nicholas Watson and his theory regarding vernacular theology see “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409.”

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sense of community that, through the exchange of books, crossed the boundaries of class, gender, and generation. The resulting effect is that the meditative and private self beloved of the Carthusians becomes accessible toeveryone, and could either be privately read by the solitary reader, or publically shared within the confines of the community. Love encourages those þat coueytest to fele treuly þe fruyt of þis boke þou must with all þi þought & alle þin entent, in þat menere make þe in þi soule present to þoo þinges þat bene bere writen seyd or done of oure lord Jesu. (Sargent 12:40-13:1) Nevertheless, before the manuscript was freely disseminated among the public, the treatise was “presented in London by its compiler, N, to the most Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, Lord Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, for inspection and due examination” (Sargent xv). Jonathan Hughes speculates that Love translation was undertaken in collaboration with Arundel, citing that the “composition of this work […] was begun in 1408,” just one year before the promulgation of the Constitutions.100 Arundel’s subsequent sanction of Love’s project is directly in line with the sixth article of the Constitutions: For that a new way doth more frequently leade astray, then an old way: we wyl and commaund, that no booke or treatise made by Iohn Wycklyffe, or other wh2 soeuer, about that time or sith4s, or hereafter to be made: be from hencefoorth read in scholes, halles, hospitals, or other places whatsoeuer, within our prouince of Canterbury aforesayd, except the same

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Michael Sargent, on the other hand, vehemently argues against a collaboration between Love and Arundel: The argument made by Jonathan Hughes that Love crafted his work in York under the patronage of Arundel when he was Archbishop there […] is simply false. Everything about the Mirror points to the early years of the Lancastrian king. (Sargent 79) My argument does not seek to side with one scholar, but merely to point out that the composition of the Mirror was achieved through a mindful observance of the Constitutions. According to Anne Hudson, “the terms of Arundel’s Constitutions were drafted” by 1407, which suggests that these prohibitions were some time in the making (Hudson 266).

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be fyrst examined by the vniuersity of Oxford or Cambrige. (Foxe, Book of Martyrs, Book 5, 726) Rather than submitting the Mirror to an official at Oxford or Cambridge, Love goes above and beyond the sixth article and solicits the one of the highest ecclesiastical power of authorityin England, the Archbishop himself. Although audiences may have been unaware of Arundel’s policies, his authority would have turned the spiritual interiority of the Mirror into a Church-sanctioned pursuit. With the profuse amount of Mirror editions in circulation during the early sixteenth century, it is not surprising that the treatise found great support from the Catholic martyr, Sir Thomas More. At a time when Catholicism was facing new detractors—Luther, Tyndale, Zwingli, and Frith—More depended on the work of his predecessors to fight the battle against heresy, and his admiration for the Carthusian author leads him to appropriate Love’s rhetoric in his recommendation of the Mirror as suitable reading material for the laity. In his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer More claims, The people vnlerned [should] occupye them selfe beside theyr other busynesse in prayour, good medytacyon, and redynge of suche englysshe bookes as moste may norysshe and exncrease deuocyon. Of whyhce kynde is Bonauenture of the lyfe of Cryste, Gerson of the folowynge of Cryst, and the deuote contemlpatyue book of Scala perfectionis wyth suche other lyke then in the lernynge what may well be answered vnto heretykes. (Schuster, 37: 26-33, italics mine)101 The inherent value of the medieval literature praised by More “serves to emphasize the strong lines of cultural and religious continuity between the medieval and early Tudor periods” (Zeeman 117). Religious controversy continued into the early modern era, and More uses medieval texts that legitimate the history of devotional guidance. The Mirror 101

More is referring to Love’s translation of Bonaventure’s Life of Christ. More also wrote a devotional treatise of his own, De Tristitia Christi.

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was particularly appealing because it provided the autonomy that reformers wanted, while simultaneously preserving the authority of the Church. The laity’s interest in private, more individualized religious practices was a reality that could not be ignored by the Church, particularly if it resulted in unorthodox ideologies. This holds true for both medieval and early modern audiences. Love’s battle against Lollardy culminates in “The Treatise on the Sacrament,” where he discusses the importance of the Eucharistic tradition at great length. This makes the Mirror very much unlike the work of Walter Hilton, whose Scale of Perfection avoids pointed references to the Wycliffite teachings exploited by the Lollards. In chapter two’s discussion of Hilton, I argue that the Scale’s ambiguity made for an easy transition into the world of print; however, Love’s defense of the Eucharist was exceptionally relevant for early modern readers. By the 1520s the doctrine of transubstantiation was once again under attack, and the teachings of Luther were beginning to find favor amongst the likes of William Tyndale and John Frith. Public burnings of Luther’s works began in the 1520s; A.G. Dickens describes a book-burning that took place on May 12th, 1521 “at St. Paul’s in London, where, before an enormous crowd, [Cardinal] Wolsey took the chair under a canopy of cloth of gold, attended by a brilliant throng of peers, bishops, and ambassadors” (Dickens 103). Public book-burnings were not the only actions taken against the spread of heretical beliefs. Two months later, in July 1521, Henry VIII published his Assertio Septum Sacramentorum," and in 1529 More wrote Dialogue Concerning Heresies (Murphy 145). More’s Dialogue is especially intriguing since Arundel’s 1409 Constitutions formed a “prominent role” in the treaties (Watson, “Censorship,” 830). Four years later, in 1533, More engages in an exchange of letters

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with John Frith, whose ideas about the Eucharist were more radical than Luther’s belief in cosubstantiation. Nevertheless, in his Letter Against Frith, More’s tone is surprisingly gentle. We find none of the furious invective that marks and mars his other polemical works. Frith is throughout the ‘yong man,’ and More seems to take him as one led astray by a vainglorious trust in his own wit. (Schuster cxli)102 More’s patience for Frith’s errant beliefs pales in comparison to Love’s vitriol against the Lollards. Though Love was appealing to later audiences seeking to sustain the Church’s authority over spiritual inwardness, many of his concerns are particular to the late medieval circumstances in which the Mirror was produced. In order to combat the threat of Lollardy, a “powerful expression of reformist tendencies” that originated “inside the Church,” Love turns the Mirror into a decidedly anti-Lollard polemic, condemning “þe lewede lollardes þat medlen hem of hem a3eynus þe feiþ falsly” (Watson, “Censorship,” 826; Sargent 152:2-3). Whereas Love generally refrains from emotional outbursts in the Mirror, he displays a rhetoric that is hauntingly Rollean in its deployment of the fire of love: Myne affeccion be enflaumede with fire of þi loue & myne hope confortede & strengþede with þis blessede sacrament so þat my life here profite euer in amend[ment] to betture, & at þe last fro þis wrecchede worlde with a blissede departyng, þat I may come wiþ þe to life euerlastyng, Jesu lorde by vertue and grace of þi life blessede wiþ out endynge Amen. amen amen. (Sargent 238:39-239:4, italics mine)103

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The full-length title of More’s work is A letter of syr Tho. More knight impugnynge the erronyouse wrytyng of Iohan Fryth agaynst the blessed sacrament of the aultare. 103

Michael Sargent notes that the closing prayer of this section is “a version of a Eucharistic prayer from the sixth, penultimate chapter of The Treatise of the Seven Points of True Love and Everlasting Wisdom” (Sargent, “Versions,” 41). The Seven Points of True and Everlasting Wisdom is the Middle English translation of Henry Suso’s popular Horologium Sapientiae.

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No well-read individual would be able to overlook Love’s direct reference to the overly affective hermit. As discussed in earlier chapters, the fire of love was a widely recognized concept and, in spite of its controversial nature, Love knew that in mentioning this mystical element his readers would be more readily drawn to the Mirror. However, Love seeks to harness the power of emotional intensity and reformulate inward spirituality within a more institutionally approved framework. The careful deliberation Love must have taken with this subject is evidenced by its delayed introduction. Readers must pay close attention to how Love frames his argument concerning the fire of love, though, and not confuse it with veneration. As the penultimate section of the Mirror, the transformative power of Church doctrine necessitates such an emphasis. Love gives worshippers a glimpse of devotional intensity that redirects them back to the authority of the traditional Church. While Love’s acknowledgement of affective piety may seem a bit out of the ordinary given the highly didactic framework of the treatise, it is the last instance of medieval piety to appear in the Mirror since he has successfully refigured with more acceptable parameters of spirituality. Generally, medieval writers such as Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe “urged their readers to see the Passion as vividly and boldly as if they had been there themselves” (Bryan 126). The raison d’être of the Mirror is to teach one how to meditate on the Passion; nevertheless, Love’s prescriptives subdue the violent imagery that permeates medieval texts of devotion. Alternatively, Love “provide[s] an immensely didactic experience” over a visionary one, thereby enforcing his role as an ecclesiastic counselor (LaVert 76). This is evidenced by the careful manner in which Love frames the narrative, and the reader’s interpretive freedom is negotiated by his

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instructions to “beholde [Christ] here in maner as I seide” (Sargent 171:1-2, italics mine). The imposition of this stratagem may appear antagonistic, but the direct address to the reader fosters a sense of self-reflection. Moreover, Love upholds the communal atmosphere of this exploration by joining the audience on their spiritual journey, even as he carefully scripts their meditative exercise: If we take here gude entent, we mowen se […] how þat we sholen paciently suffre tribulacion, & how þat god suffreþ hees chosen soules to be disesed & tempted for hir beste, & to hir mede. (Sargent 35:3-6)104 The Mirror thus reconciles a meditative practice with an active lifestyle, a quality that early modern audiences were certainly looking for in spiritual literature. As a more didactic model of piety, Love’s constant references to “tak[e] hede & mak[e] vs in mynde as present” consequently place the audience within carefully constructed social communities” (Sargent 161:1-2; Stanbury 183). Love’s wariness about the frenzy of affective piety leads him to moderate his Passion meditation. On the day of Christ’s crucifixion, the narrator tells us that he is the fairest 3onge manne of alle childrene þat euer were born taking paciently of þoo foulest wrecches, þe hardest & moste bitter stroked of scourges, & so þat moste innocent, faireste & clennest flesh, floure of alle mankynde, all to rente & fulle of wondes, rennyng out of alle sides þat preciouse kynges blode. (Sargent 168:38-42, italics mine) This disciplined rhetoric holds great import in its mimesis of Christ’s “grete pacience, […] grete loue, & […] vnspekable beningnite,” and readers are invested with a more purposeful role, pushing them deeper into a meditative state (Sargent 177:10-11). The Mirror’s audience is to internalize Christ’s behavior and “folowe him by pacience & mekenes” (Sargent 171:12). Not unsurprisingly, Passion meditations can function much

104

In “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw?’” Barbara Newman calls these formulaic indices “scripted visions” (Newman 25).

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like a confession. Active reflection upon one’s sins should lead to feelings of remorse; in order to gain absolution, moreover, some form of atonement is necessary. Self-realization is achieved, but it cannot be properly fulfilled until the pious individual returns to the external world of the confessional, where penance can be prescribed by a priest. Yet again, the didactic exercise provides enough autonomy to satisfy the reader, before quickly leading them back into the safe arms of the Church. Henry VIII’s desire to break from the Church of Rome initiated a series of religious upheavals that continued well into the seventeenth century. Diarmaid MacCulloch observes, “Out of this world came a church which puzzled observers at the time, yet which briefly in the 1540s embraced a wider spectrum of religious opinion than any version of the church in England since” (MacCulloch 159-60). The Mirror’s emphasis on individual inwardness conforms to the teachings of the Church, but the highly orthodox, highly Catholic nature of the text would lose its influence after the King’s break from Rome. As such, de Worde’s 1530 edition, STC 3267, would be the last time a faithful reproduction of Love’s treatise was printed in the sixteenth century, though Love’s text was not completely suppressed by religious change. The Church of England of the early seventeenth century may not have been Catholic, but the practice of Catholicism in England did not end; it merely faded into the shadows. Here, in this clandestine atmosphere, lay the prime opportunity to engage in an action that Love himself did—adapt an older text to suit a contemporary religious clime. Often neglected by medieval and Renaissance scholars alike, STC 3268, printed by Charles Boscard around the year 1609, was the first of several editions to appear after the turn of the

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century.105 R.B. McKerrow describes Boscard as “a printer at Douai, 1596-1610, and at St. Omer, 1610-19,” who was a fairly prolific printer, with a total of sixty-three books attributed to his press (McKerrow 43).106 Stylistically, STC 3268 mimics the sixteenth-century edition in its abundant use of woodcut images, but the similarities end there. Similar to the 1501 edition of The Book of Margery Kempe, a vast amount of passages are deleted in seventeenth-century copies of the Mirror. Evidently, the Mirror’s extractor knew Love’s original text very well and, as I will suggest in the following pages, carefully altered or excised passages that might not be pertinent to later audiences. Of course, in a text as long as the Mirror, I cannot take every alteration into consideration, but most changes indicate a concerted effort to appeal to new readers. Many of these deletions occur when Love inserts himself into the narrative. For example, the compositor of STC 3268 removes “Anoþer vnderstandyng is in þees wordes þe which doctours comunly tellen, & þerfore we passe ouer þat at þis tyme” (Sargent 18:20-21). Other passages are refigured to incorporate Catholic doctrine while simultaneously deleting out-dated references, such as Lollardy, that I will discuss in greater detail. In the introductory section to this chapter, I noted how Love’s name vanishes from the pages of his translation. Although his presence is eliminated, this alteration establishes a greater sense of authority by relying on an influential figure from the medieval past that Love, and later advocates such as More, venerated. 105

For more information see Richard Kieckhefer’s “Recent Work on Pseudo-Bonaventure and Nicholas Love” in Mystics Quarterly 21.2 (June 1995): 41-50. 106

Some of Boscard’s printings are as follows: Certaine Deuout Considerations of Frequenting the Blesse Sacrament, Te Litle Memorial, Concerning the Good and Fruitfull Vse of the Sacraments, An Instruction of How to Pray and Meditate Well, A Brief Treatise of Diuerse Plaine and Sure Wayes to Finde out the Truthe in This […] Time of Heresie, The Firm Foundation of Catholike Religion, Against the Bottomless Pitt of Heresies, The Contempt of the World, and the Vanities Thereof, The Dialogues of Saint Gregorie, A Deuout Exposition of the Holie Masse, The Gagge of the New Gospel, A Treatise of Auricular Confession, and The Life of Sainct Catharine of Siena. As you can see, all these texts are of religious—and Catholic—subjects.

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Throughout the course of this chapter I have argued that two important passages to late medieval- and sixteenth-century readers were the Attende Lector and Arundel’s approbatio. To briefly recapitulate, the Attende Lector identifies which sections of the treatise “are added by the translator or compiler beyond those in the Latin book of the Meditation of the Life of Christ,” and those that are by “the venerable doctor Bonaventure” (Sargent, 1992 Mirror edition, xxx). While Attende lector contains information that may only be of interest to educated audiences—both medieval readers and beyond—the approbatio is an integral part of the Mirror in that it reveals Archbishop Arundel’s approval of the text: The original copy of this book, that is, The Mirror of the Life of Christ in English, was presented in London by its compiler, N, to the Most Reverend Father and Lord in Christ, Lord Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, for inspection and due examination before it was freely communicated. Who after examining it for several days, returning it to the abovementioned author, commended and approved it personally, and further decreed and commanded by his metropolitan authority that it rather be published universally for the edification of the faithful and the confutation of heretics or lollards. (Sargent xv) The missing approbatio in STC 3268 might seem puzzling were it not for the incongruity between the two centuries. Seventeenth-century heresy was much different than medieval definitions of such. In the post-Reformation world, the tables were turned, and Catholic books were considered contraband; as such, the Mirror was being redeployed to maintain readers’ adherence to the tenets of the holy Catholic Church. Alternatively, the elimination of this passage resolves one of the greatest inconsistencies in the Mirror. That this memorandum is written in Latin belies Love’s oft-professed concern for a more common audience of “lewde men & women & hem þat bene of simple vndirstondyng” (Sargent 10:6-7). STC 3268, then, fulfills Love’s vision of a communal audience nearly

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two hundred years after the Mirror’s initial appearance. The memorandum is of great historical significance, but an advertisement championing Arundel’s approval would only have reinforced the religious persecution seventeenth-century Catholics were facing. In the Middle Ages, Catholicism was the only religion, and all other movements were forms of heresy. In the seventeenth century, however, Catholic adherents were England’s religious minority, and an underground one at that. Consequently, Boscard reconfigures the Mirror’s religious detractors, and makes the Lollards of the Middle Ages disappear. For instance, when Love claims, “sume men þenken aftur þe fals opinion of lollardes þat shrift of mouþe is not needful,” Boscard turns the infamous Lollards into men who refuse to adhere to Catholic doctrine: “some men there be who are of the contrary opinion to so many Catholikes, to wit, that Confession in not needfull” (Sargent 90:39-40; STC 3268, 240:15-19). Another one of Boscard’s deletions occurs when Love gives an authorial nod to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and the Mixed Life: Whereof & oþer vertuese exercise þat longeþ to contemplative lyuyng, & specialy to a recluse, & also of medlet life, þat is to sey sumtyme actife & sumtyme contemplative, as it longeþ to diuerse persones þat in worldly astate hauen grace of gostly loue who so wole more pleynly [be] enfourmed & tauht in English tonge lete him loke þe tretees þat þe worþi clerk & holi lyuere Maister Walter Hilton þe Chanon of Thurgarton wrote in English by grete grace & hye discrecion. (Sargent 122:34-41) Part of the reason for this modification is that STC 3268’s readership does not differentiate between active, contemplative, and mixed lives the same way that medieval audiences did. The dissolution of the monasteries was complete by 1538, and contemporary Catholics were living a pseudo-reclusive lifestyle. They praticed their faith in secret, and those who wished to pursue a religious life were forced into exile, seeking

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sanctuary in monastic communities abroad. Certainly, clandestine groups were still reading the work of Hilton, but none of his treatises had been printed since 1533. In addition, a Hiltonian reference would deny the claim for Bonaventure’s authorship.107 As intriguing as Hilton’s disappearance is, then, this modification pales in comparison to the eleven pages that are missing in the discussion of the Last Supper, where Love praises the Eucharistic tradition. As beautifully written as this chapter is, later Catholics did not need to be reminded that the miracle of transubstantiation should “kyndele mannus soule & enflawme it al holy in to þe 3iuere þerof our lorde Jesus criste” (Sargent 149:41-150:1). Seventeenth-century readers had to maintain a strict level of religious discipline and, as I previously note, there are some Rollean references to the fire of love. This particular example may be more subtle than “Myne affeccion be enflaumede with fire of þi loue,” but affective piety had been laid to rest in the spiritual past it originated from (Sargent 152:23-30; 238:39-40). Not all alterations to Boscard’s edition were made in the form of deletions; occasionally the compiler inserts additional matter into the text. In Chapter forty, “Of the Passion of our Lored Ie1u Christ: and fir1te of his Prayer in the Garden,” the following digression is added: Pau1e here a litle, and deuoutly cal to minde the great wonders of our Lorde; for behould he hath often heretofore prayed for thee, but not he is cons1trained to pray for him 1elfe. O maruellous humilitie, for beinge Almightie, coeternall and coequal with his Father, he 1eemeth to forget that he is God, and praieth as an other man, 1tanding there as is it were 1ome poore body that had neede to pray vnto God for helpe. (STC 3268 476:21-477:6) This editorial intervention accentuates the current plight of Catholicism; just as Christ was forced to pray for God’s intercession, so must the devout call upon his help to restore 107

As discussed in my Hilton chapter, the Scale was not reprinted until 1653.

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the Catholic faith to England’s people. The identity of the person responsible for STC 3268’s alterations may never be known, but this text is very similar to the next Mirror edition, STC 13034, printed in 1622 by John Heigham. A Catholic exile, Heigham left England for Douai, where he came into contact with Boscard. Known as a man of strong Catholic faith, Heigham was “an able conservationalist, widely read, dexterous in argument, forceful in expression, and tireless in the defence of the Church to whose cause he dedicated his life” (Allison 236). One event in particular directly links Heigham to Boscard’s edition of the Mirror; it also it establishes a relationship between the two men. In 1609 Heigham “sent his wife to England,” where a number of books were confiscated by officials; one of these confiscated books is believed to be Boscard’s Mirror (Allison, “Heigham,” 232).108 The probability of Heigham’s involvement with the 1609 Mirror is further substantiated by the fact that he was a productive printer and translator. A total of twenty-two works of recusant literature are accredited to him; ten are original, eight are translations, and four are compilations.109 More importantly, he undertook the printing of the Mirror after Boscard’s death. Heigham transforms his 1622 Mirror into a distinctly different text than Boscard’s, and I believe that STC 3268 represents his first attempt at becoming a successful author, printer, and translator. The more favorable conditions in the book trade enable Heigham to include some more informational details than shown in STC 3268.

108

The list of books confiscated by John Wolstenholme can be found in “The Reports of William Udall, Informer, 1605-1612 [pt2].” 109

Some of these texts are reprints. For example, there are a total of three editions of Heigham’s Six Spiritual Bookes, Ful of Maruelous Pietie and Deuotion. For a complete listing of the texts printed by Heigham and their dates consult The Contemporary Printed Literature of the Counter-Reformation Bewteen 1558 and 1640, edited by A.F. Allison and D.M. Rogers.

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Heigham continues Boscard’s tradition of attributing the text to Bonaventure, but the information at the bottom of the page reveals his great involvement in bringing the text to print. The Mirror thus becomes known as The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus, and it is Newly copo1ed by IOHN HEIGHAM, And by him al1o publi1ed, for the greater confort and good of all deuout and godly per1ons. (Rogers, title page)110 Although all of Heigham’s alterations to the Mirror are noteworthy, his first major change is the deletion of the original proheme written by Love. Boscard’s edition maintains this proheme, but Heigham expunges it in his Life. Nonetheless, Heigham does not completely ignore the circumstances under which Bonaventure’s Meditationes was written. As Love explains, “þe deuoute & worthy clerke Bonauentre wrot hem to a religiouse woman,” who just so happened to be a Poor Clare (Sargent 10:10-11). Heigham maintains the tradition of dedicating a book of spiritual devotion to a woman of religion, and substitutes Love’s proheme with a dedicatory epistle to “The Right Reverend and Religious Mother, Clara Mariana, Right worthie Abe11e of the poore Clares of Graueling: and to all her deuout and Religious daughters” (Rogers A.2.). Love’s decision to translate the Meditationes into English was made “at þe instance & þe the prayer of some deuoute soules” (Sargent 10:17). Likewise, the impetus for Heigham to take up his “prophane and vnworthie pen” arose from a request by the Poor Clares: Notwithstanding, 1o far did their mo1t pious de1ires preuayle with me, depending much (next after God) vpon the a1i1tance of their holy prayers, that I promi1ed them to employ therein, all the little talent which God hath lent me. Confe1sing my 1elfe, therefore, both encouraged, & a1si1ted, by the1e your deuout and religious daughters, I could in dutie doe no le11e, 110

Hereafter referred to as Life.

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then dedicate the 1ame vnto your 1elfe, their worthy Mother. (Rogers A.2A.2v) Heigham’s rhetoric displays a man with a powerful authorial gift, who holds the Poor Clares in great esteem. His decision to refashion the Mirror demonstrates how the treatise had a long, politicized relation to the traditional Church. Newly modernized as the Life, Heigham keeps the medieval past an important part of seventeenth-century devotional practices. In spite of the numerous changes Heigham made in the Life, he was a very careful reader of the Mirror. In the dedicatory epistle, he tells Clara Mariana to Receiue then (Right virtuous and Religious Mother) this my poore and vnworthie pre1ent, vnder the winges of your protection, to whom my pen, my hande, and hart, hath wholie deuoted this diuine treati1e. Lodge it, loue it, and looke often into it. Lodge it nere vnto you: loue it as deare vnto you: looke often into it as delighting you. Lodge it, becau1e it cometh to you for harbour: loue it, becau1e it is your 1pou1es picture: looke often into it, becau2e it is a most perfect mirour. (Rogers, A.3.v, italics mine) The comparison of the text as mirror is a powerful metaphor that preserves the integrity of Love’s title. The concept of the text as a mirror can also be seen in the supplementary documents he adds to the end of each chapter. In his augmentation to the very first chapter of the treatise—Of the Creation of Angells and Men, and both of their falls from the grace of God—Heigham speaks directly to the reader and summarizes the chapter’s moral: We ought not to 1uport any for flehe, bood, or affinitie 1ake, when as they openlie doe offend, but to reproue them for their 1inne, and forth with to auoid and flie their companie. (Rogers 14) Moreover, Heigham rechannels the didactic focus of the Mirrror using a number of different poetic styles. The apostrophe, because it evokes a greater sense of pathos, is

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deployed quite frequently in the Life. In chapter fifty-two, “How our Lord Ie1us foretold his death vnto his mother,” Heigham writes, (ô my 1oule) be inwardly moued, and deplore the greate 1orrowe of this pen1iue Lady, for 1he who was 1o pittifull towards all, is now her 1elfe left a widdowe, is for1aken of her only Sonne; A Sonne who went innocently to dye a 1hamefull and violent death, and that in the flower of his age. A Sonne that was mo1t virtuous and obedient. […] And if the contemplation of the1e thinges, cau1e not teares to i11ue forth of thine eies, I doe not know what may doe it: take heede therefore that thou a1i1t not with dry eies, not with a hard and obdurate hart, not without pittie at a 1pectacle 1o 1ull of pittie. (Rogers 521-22) The invocation of the soul reinforces a drive for interiority that helps one become more engaged in the reading process. While Heigham’s advice may not be as intrusive as Love’s prescriptives to “behold […] in maner as I seide,” his use of the first-person seems almost voyeuristic a times (Sargent 171:1-2). Not only are the actions of Christ and his mother under display here, but so are the responses of the reader. It is not merely enough to read the text; one should react to the text by shedding tears. Heigham’s use of the apostrophe becomes more intense as he reaches the account of Christ’s Passion. In a chapter unique to the Life, “Of the 1even wordes which our lord 1pake vpon the Crosse, and of his yelding vp the Ghost,” the reader is presented with a tirade that details the injustice of the Passion: O incomprehen1ible charitie! ô abi11e of mercie, ô vnheard-of-clemencie of our Sauior! His whole members are puld a1under vp2 the Crosse, his 1inewes are broken his ioyntes are di11olved, his handes and feete are cruelly pieced, he is on euery 1id mocked, 1corned and bla1phemed, and he among1t all the1e paines and torm4ts, murmurs not, is not angire, comm7ds not fire to de1cend from heauen, nor the earth to open to 1wallow vp his enimies, but noth with teares, with blood, and with his venerable wordes, prayeth to his Father for their pardon. (Rogers 591-92) The long sentence structure helps prolong the fervor of the aside and maintain the pathos of the narrative. As Christ is left hanging on the cross for all audiences to imagine, the

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repetitive nature of the following lament demonstrates how words begin to fail the writer: “O 1weete wordes, 1weete death, 1weete blood, 1weete woundes, and 1weete far well of 1o deare and 1weet a father” (Rogers 601). In the ensuing chapter, Heigham draws upon the mystical tradition: O mo1t precious wounds of our Lords 1ide, 1tricken, not with that 1teely launce, but with the launce of diuine loue, which thou 1o faithfully bore1t vnto our 1oules! O gate of heauen, ô fountaine of paradi1e, ô caue of mo1t delicate and daintie wines, ô doore of the 1heepfould of our Lord, by which who 1oever entereth is 1aued, and going in, and coming out, doth finde mo1t fat and fertile pa1ture! Open (ô sweete Iesu) al1o to my soule, this holie gate, and by the 1ame grant me a pa11age into that cele1tiall winecellar, euen to the bowels of thy loue, that I al1o may drinke of that mo1t 1weete fountaine, and being inebriated with that mo1t our liquor, my 1oule may 1weetly 1leepe therin, 1aying with the prophet. This is my resting place for euer and euer, here will I dwell becau2e I haue cho2en the 2ame. (Rogers 612, italics from text) Here, Heigham’s aside becomes more sexually charged than anything evidenced in Rolle, Julian, or Kempe. The intensity of emotion even transcends Love, who prays, “Myne affeccion be enflaumede with fire of þi loue” (Sargent 238:39-40). Christ’s body, pierced by a “lance of diuine love,” represents a symbolic womb, and the rhythmic “going in, and coming out” escalates into an orgasmic fantasy whereby Christ is finally entreated to grant the narrator “passage into [Christ’s] cele1tiall wine-cellar.” Indeed, Christ’s “mo1t fat and fertile pa1ture” is reproductive in the sense that his bloodshed does grant everlasting life—but only to the devout. Of course, not anyone can be labeled as devout. As a Catholic treatise that has been updated numerous times—first by Love, then by Boscard and, finally, by Heigham— one can only be labeled as a devout individual if they support the Catholic faith. In the “Docvments for Vs” Heigham focuses on the sacrament of the altar, and his discussion about the “Sacram4t of [Christ’s] bodie and blood” replaces Love’s “Treatise

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on the Sacrament” (Rogers 612-13). As noted several times previously, there are no Lollards in seventeenth-century England; however, there are plenty of persons who “refu1e to beleeue [as they] ought in the diuine my1teries (and namely in the Sacram4t of his bodie and blood)” (Rogers 613). Only those, then, who believe in the miracle of transubstantiation can be “vnited with the Church” (Rogers 613). The rites of communion are only one part of Catholic doctrine; consequently, Heigham uses the metaphor of Christ’s open side to develop the importance of a thorough and honest confession: “Learne thou that as Christ opened his 1ide very largly in his pa11ion, 1o to open thy con1cience verye largely and 1incerely in Confe11ion” (Rogers 613). The relationship of confessor to confessee is analogous to the Passion. Sin separates the individual from Christ, and such a wound cannot be ignored; if left untreated, it will only fester uncontrollably. The only way to be reunited with Christ is through the rituals of the Catholic Church. Sins must be confessed, and only a priest can offer absolution. Thus, as Heigham reshapes Love’s Mirror for seventeenth-century Catholics, he fosters both knowledge and understanding of traditional Catholic doctrine. Whether or not Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is an “expression of what the fifteenth-century church wanted lay devotion to be,” it underwent some very remarkable resurrections throughout its history (Karnes 384). Each revision breathes new life into a treatise that could easily have been forgotten by later audiences, but we must also remember to credit its survival to Nicholas Love. As one of the earliest Priors of the Carthusian monastery of Mount Grace, Love seeks to unite his religiopolitical values with the outside world, and while Carthusians may have been cloistered away from the medieval community, their very active involvement in manuscript

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transmission led to an exchange of books that crossed the boundaries of class, gender, and generation. 111 In order to accomplish this amazing feat, Love straddles the tension between church authority and private devotion, adopting a method of composition that extends the advice proffered by Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life. The meditative and private self beloved of the Carthusians is thus made accessible to everyone, and could either be privately consumed by the solitary reader, or publically shared in the community. Lotte Hellinga raises a compelling question about the uniformity and lack of editorial interference in the Mirror’s early printed edition—“Did the early printers know (or think they knew) more about its antecedents than we do now?” (Hellinga 162). As I have shown in my analysis of Caxton’s, de Worde’s, and Pynson’s editions, the answer to her query is a resounding ‘yes.’ Printers did not deviate from the body of the Mirror, keeping the treatise fully intact; the only changes made to sixteenth-century editions were in the form of woodcut images. Even at that, most of the images were consistent from edition to edition. The same does not hold true, though, for the Mirror’s seventeenth-century imprints. Boscard and Heigham’s editions may look very different than sixteenth-century ones, but they do not lose the spirit of the original. The Mirror was composed in a time of great religious strife, and Heigham’s Life of Ovr Blessed Lord and Saviovr Jesvs Christ was redeployed because the fate of English Catholicism was once again under threat. Most of the changes modernize overtly medieval qualities of the Mirror, emphasizing or

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Although there is no certainty about the length of time Love served as Prior of the monastery, Sargent notes that a legal document dated in 1415 cites “Nicholas, prior of the house of Mount Grace” (Sargent xiii). Love’s tenure as prior is been surmised to have ended in 1417, although Elizabeth Zeeman cites that he “resigned the office of the Prior in 1421 and died as an ordinary monk in 1424” (Zeeman 114). For more information on the Carthusian production of texts see Michael Sargent’s “The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writing.”

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erasing passages to suit the times, such as when Boscard and Heigham delete the attende lector and Arundelian approbatio. While I argue that this alters the historicity of the text, it does not change its meaning. More importantly, John Heigham engages in the same activity as Nicholas Love in his translatation the Meditationes into English—he resurrects a text from the past and re-presents it for contemporary audiences. If any act of Boscard’s or Heigham’s actions can be said to have a long-lasting effect on the Mirror, it is the fact that they promote a longstanding Catholic tradition that was vitally important to seventeenth-century religious cultures. Nicholas Love may not have the charisma of Rolle, the austerity of Hilton, the compassion of Julian of Norwich, nor the whimsy of Margery Kempe, but the power of print allows his message to to continue, uniting more readers as time passes.

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CHAPTER VI CONCLUSION The rich print histories of The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ reveal the long-lasting permanence of medieval texts of devotion. As vastly different as the treatises are, they all evince an abiding concern with the processes of self-envisioning, selfknowledge, and affective and rational self-transformation. In teaching literate men and women the basic disciplines of contemplation, they encourage them to watch, search, and improve their “inner” selves. (Bryan 3) The composition of these works span more than fifty years, and some very momentous events would occur between the early 1380s, when Hilton finished the Scale, and 1436, when Margery Kempe’s first scribe began work on her Book. The teachings of the theologian, John Wycliffe, were circulating beyond the boundaries of Oxford, causing great concern among ecclesiasts. As Prior of Thurgarton, Hilton “was authorized to arrest, examine, and imprison and imprison heretics;” however, his writing reveals a greater freedom than the post Wycliffite world of Nicholas Love (Clark 16). Love’s Mirror appears around the heyday of Lollardy, and the sixth article of the Lambeth

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Constitutions confirms that male writers were policed by ecclesiastic authority, even if they were members of higher orders within the Church. As my chapters on Hilton and Love have established, both writers uphold a sense of interiority, but the meditations in the Mirror are significantly more scripted than those of the Scale. As the differences between these writers attest, religious works are always tailored to meet the immediate needs of their audiences. Compared to Hilton and Love, authorial tone in The Revelations of Julian of Norwich and The Book of Margery Kempe is quite understated. Both women carefully navigate their personal, spiritual experiences using the conventional humility topos. Julian describes herself as “a symple creature unlettyrde,” and Margery Kempe’s scribe refers to her as “this creature.” In “Telling Tales,” I explain how time spent in active reflection allows Julian to adopt a decidedly more confident tone between the Short and Long versions of her Revelations; nevertheless, her unusual opinions about sin and hell walk a heretical fine-line. Although Julian writes from the safety of an anchorage, her treatise did not receive the attention of early modern audiences until the very late date of 1670. Paradoxically, the Book of Margery Kempe was printed twice in the early years of the sixteenth century. Whereas the manuscript is filled with a very real depiction of medieval life with “its details of food and dress and travel, its look into the rituals of late medieval religion, its noisy, uncomfortable, and demonstrably pious protagonist, and its social and ecclesiastical critiques,” the printed versions present a very different portrait of the life and trials of Margery Kempe (Staley, The Book of Margery Kempe, vii). The elaborate descriptions of Margery’s private life, which include direct references to people, places, and dates; accusations of heresy; and altercations with ecclesiastical authorities are all

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expunged by the time her text appears in quarto format in 1501. Early modern readers may have been exposed to the Book, but they only saw the briefest of glimpses since over one hundred pages of the manuscript were excised for the Shorte Treatyse. A woman who actively shunned the cloistered life, Margery Kempe’s second printer, Henry Pepwell re-presents her as an anchoress in his 1521 anthology of devotional tracts. The irony is that this metamorphosis finally gains her the acceptance she had been so desperately seeking, but what made her unique and memorable is lost for later readers of the text. Late printing dates and drastically refashioned editions may have been the history of female-authored works, but Walter Hilton’s Scale and Nicholas Love’s Mirror went to print very regularly. Between 1484 and 1659, the Scale and the Mirror were printed a total of twenty-one times in comparison to the three imprints of Julian and Margery. Some alterations were made to them but, for the most part, they were faithful reproductions. The reasoning behind this is probably attributed to the fact that once an edition was issued in print, it could indeed be accepted as standard and copied in subsequent editions without being subjected to further critical assessment. However, first publication in print could also be the beginning of a process of comparison and improvement. (Hellinga 91) It is highly likely that the manuscript presented to de Worde contained both editions of the Scale and the Mixed Life, so it is not unusual that early modern printers would continue to manufacture the treatise in this fashion. The only areas of “improvement” were the addition of woodcut images, though, as I have noted in “The Interior World of Hilton’s Scale,” these woodcuts were held to a minimum. De Worde only deviates from this in his third edition of the Scale when he adds a total three images, but he returns to a single image in his last edition of 1533. The same holds true for sixteenth-century copies

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of Nicholas Love’s Mirror. The content of the treatise is not changed, but the competitive nature of the book trades leads printers to add more woodcuts with each subsequent reprinting. Herein lies the reason for the disproportionate printing histories of male versus female authored texts—the amount of work it took to refashion these texts for later audiences. The Scale and the Mirror were more or less ready to go to print as they were. This was not the case with Margery Kempe or with Julian of Norwich. The Book and the Revelations can still be classified as religious texts of devotion, but in comparison to the Scale and the Mirror, they are texts of an entirely different sort. The genre of mysticism may not have been a part of the English lexicon in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, but it does have very distinguishable characteristics. One of its most important features of mysticism is that it discusses intimate, personal experiences rather than those experienced through organized public rituals and practices. Hilton and Love talk about inward spirituality, but their texts mediate the religious experience, making inward meditation a more collective activity. Allison Foster notes that “the first decade of [de Worde’s] press saw the publication of several mystical treatises,” but Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is more didactic in function than Margery’s Book.112 In “Margery Kempe, Wynkyn de Worde, Henry Pepwell, and the Counterfeit Anchoress of Fleet Street,” I contend that a sixteenth-century compositor removes those mystical elements—elements that are very subjective in nature—and re-constructs it to emphasize a highly didactic nature. Fortunately, the Book happened to have those rare moments of inculcation that

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Allyson Foster lists the following as treatises printed by de Worde in the 1490s: “The Chastysing of Goddes chyldren (c. 1492); Tretyse of loue (1493); the Lyf of Saynt Katherin of senis with the reuelacions of saynt Elyzabeth the kynges doughter of hungarye (1493),” along with Hilton’s Scale and Mixed Life (A. Foster 101).

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could be culled, however arduous that process may have been. As a result, the reformed Margery of the Shorte Treatyse can almost be interchanged for the anonymous “goostli suster in Jhesu Crist” that Hilton addresses in Scale I (Bestul, Scale I: 2). For all we know, the extractor of the treatise may have envisioned his Margery as a woman who had read and internalized the advice of Hilton’s Scale. When Pepwell labels Margery as an anchoress in his 1521 edition of the Shorte Treatyse he ultimately privileges her life and her visions. Julian of Norwich, however, was an anchoress, and the “fifteen yere after and mor” that she spent in active contemplation enables her to expand her first version, A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman into “a vernacular work of considerable originality and theological daring” (Watson 379:12; “Composition,” 664). Julian’s Revelations is everything the compositor of Margery’s Book tried to make the Shorte Treatyse be; nevertheless, the highly introspective format of her visions is perhaps too introspective. For a woman of the Middle Ages, Julian displays too much autonomy from ecclesiastical authority. The Shorte Treatyse may push ecclesiastical boundaries when Christ tells Margery that she prays, recites the rosary, fasts, and gives alms too much, but Julian’s reiterations that “in all thing I beleve as holy church precheth and techeth” is too ambiguous (Watson 157:1718). The complications of Julian’s Revelations become even more problematic when we consider who the target audience for her treatise may have been. It seems unlikely that men would want to be instructed about their spirituality by an anchoress, and the text is theologically complex enough that it probably would have been too advanced for the average premodern woman. Thus, the Revelations lay in wait for three hundred years, when Serenus Cressy dedicated the text to a woman of great spirituality—Lady Mary

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Blount, mother to Clementina Cary, “founder of the English Benedictine convent in Paris” (Watson 14). It had been a long time coming, but Julian finally received the audience her text so richly deserved. Cressy’s alterations in the Revelations are, for the most part, very standard. He adds a dedicatory epistle to Lady Mary Blount; a letter to the reader, in which he attempts to provide some biographical information about Julian; and a small woodcut image. Conversely, seventeenth-century editions of Nicholas Love’s Mirror were very different than sixteenth-century ones. In Boscard’s edition of 1609, Love’s name as author/translator disappears and is replaced by Bonaventure’s. Equally significant to the change in authorship is the disappearance of the attende lector passage and Arundelian approbatio; however, Boscard maintains the sixteenth-century tradition of adorning his edition with a copious amount of woodcut images. The Mirror becomes almost unrecognizable once John Heigham takes control of its printing by 1622—not only in relation to its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions, but to Boscard’s recent imprint. Heigham preserves Bonaventuran authorship, but he stakes an authorial claim of his own when he renames it The Life of Ovr Blessed Lord and Saviovr Jesvs Christ (Rogers, title page). As such, the Mirror’s seventeenth-century trajectory is similar to the adaptation of Margery Kempe’s Book, though instead of being drastically abridged, it is significantly lengthened with new meanings for new audiences in the twenty-five added chapters. The new readership for Love’s Mirror may have changed dramatically in the seventeenth century, but A. I. Doyle notes that it “continued to be kept and known […] by Catholics in England and in exile on the continent of Europe, lay-people, clergy, and members of religious orders, a mixed public, as in the middle ages” (Doyle 165). While

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Doyle continues to explain that “even strongly anti-Catholic collectors thought [these editions] worth preserving for critical reading and historical evidence,” Love’s Mirror— even Heigham’s Life—were not reprinted again until the early years of the twentiethcentury, and even then there was a lull in its production (Doyle 165). After L.F. Powell’s edition of 1908, the Mirror would not be reprinted again until 1989 by James Hogg; however, it was quickly followed by Michael Sargent’s two volumes of 1992 and 2004. Margery Kempe’s sixteenth-century Shorte Tretyse did not see another printing until 1925, when Edmund Gardner re-released Pepwell’s anthology and renamed it The Cell of Self-Knowledge. Since the discovery of The Book of Margery Kempe in 1934, it has been reprinted numerous times. On the other hand, Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and Julian’s Revelations were reprinted several times in the late nineteenth-century, and Placid Spearitt attributes the survival of these two “classics” to the exiled Black monks (Spearitt 287). The Scale was modernized twice—in 1869 and 1870—and has been reprinted seven more times between 1923 and 2000, and the Revelations has rebounded from its late printing date with over ten editions printed between 1843 and 2006. As this study has demonstrated, the process of refashioning medieval texts for later audiences is very complicated. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the ratio of male to female authored texts discussed in this study is seven to one. A final reason for this imbalance can be tied to England’s first printer, William Caxton. Geroge Keiser explains that Caxton’s disinclination to print the works of the Middle English mystics was because he “was a proponent and spokesman for the active life” (Keiser 18). When we compare Hilton and Love with Julian and Margery Kempe, we see that the Scale and the Mirror advocate a mixed life over a contemplative one. Of course, book

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one of the Scale was intended for an anchoress, but Hilton extends the Scale’s audience to the laity by book two. Moreover, once scribes and printers appended the Mixed Life to the Scale it promoted a mixed life even more. While my study has paid particular attention to the printers responsible for bringing these texts to print, it is important not to conflate the role of a printer with that of a compiler; however, “most early modern printers are all too silent on the subject of procedures for revising and editing, or who carried out these procedures in the printing house” (Hellinga 85). In spite of the mystery that will probably always surround the textual reconstructions of The Scale of Perfection, The Revelations of Julian of Norwich, The Book of Margery Kempe, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, all four reached a diversity of readers throughout their very long, very remarkable histories.

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