Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation ed. by Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas H. Bestul (review)

Abstract

Reviews Anne clark bartlett and Thomas H. BESTUL, eds., Cultures ofPiety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. vii, 256. isbn: 0-8014-3443-2. $49.95 (cloth), 0-8014-8455-3. $17.95 (paper). Anthologies often bring together widely diverse selections to setve a non-specialist audience. In one way, Cultures ofPiety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation conforms to this expectation by offering seven short selections that could easily be included in undergraduate or graduate courses in medieval literature; in another way, the grouping of prayers, devotions, meditations, and dialogues is so carefully focused that it will engage the scholar who specializes in the religious and social practices oflate medieval England. By their own account, Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas H. Bestul have organized these readings 'to demonstrate the variety of late medieval devotional writing and to suggest its importance in defining the literary culture of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England.' With this aim in mind, the editors have written a valuable introduction that surveys the development and popularity of Christian devotional practice, even as it provides an argument for considering devotional treatises as central components ofcanonical literature. Their claim is supported by the popularity and wide dissemination of these texts throughout the medieval period and by the great insight devotional literature offers into the social practices of those not usually represented in canonical texts. In this, the anthology is to be praised for enlarging our perceptions oflate medieval England and for reproducing writing that would have been read by several different medieval audiences. In addition to a specialized bibliography for each of the seven pieces featured here, individual translators include an ovetview of each text, a short discussion of its devotional importance, and an edition ofthe original. The translations arc suited to an undergraduate audience, even as the appendix, which includes the six Middle English texts, accommodates the specialist. The first selection, The Book ofHoly Medicines, is an allegorical treatise written for a lay, French-speaking audience and authored by Henry ofGrosmont, duke of Lancastet and father ofthe same Blanche honored in Chaucer's Book ofthe Duchess. The only Anglo-Norman text in this collection, the translation ofLe LivredeSeyntzMedicines, is by M. Teresa Tavormina, who describes Henry's use ofmaternal images in his meditation on the Virgin Mary and the particularly intimate relation he enjoys with her. Unfortunately, the editots elected not to include the Anglo-Norman text in the appendix, which would have cemented visually in an undergraduate mind the linguistic multiplicity of late medieval England, even as it would offer the specialist easy access to the original. The second translation in Cultures ofPiety, a selection from the Pseudo-Augustinian ARTHURIANA ??.3 (2??0) REVIEWS105 Soliloquies, is offered by Robert S. Sturges, who illustrates how the Soliloquies provide a strong condemnarion of the Wycliffian controversies regarding predestination and the use of images, which were seen as particularly harmful for women. The Soliloquies were written as a commentary on the dangers nuns face, which makes them particularly useful for those studyingwomen's communities. Mona L. Logarbo's contribution, The Gast ofGuy, is the most intriguing selection featured here. This account, which records a purported convetsation between a Dominican friar and a soul in purgatory, was understood as an orthodox text regarding penance and intercessory prayer, but the dialogue illusttates provocative moments ofheterodoxy: the friar summoning Guy's spirit to appeat; the layman's detailed knowledge ofthe scriprures and Christian theology, which he uses to admonish the friar about his preaching; and the indirect suggestion that laity's direct experiences with the divine can be more knowledgeable than those of invested religious persons. By contrast, Bartlett and Bestul offer two otthodox devotions that demonsttate lay interest in affective piety, including The Privity ofthe Passion and The Fifteen Oes, translated respectively by Denise N. Baket and Rebecca Krug. Read together, the two pieces illustrate the values of compassion, contrition, and contemplation encouraged by late medieval religious doctrine. Wide circulation of both texts demonstrates that the laity accepted these values and followed them in their meditations on the Passion. A fitting complement to the Soliloquies, Paul F. Schaffners translation of Life of Soul is a...