Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation (review)

Abstract

Reviews 159 churches, where whoever ran might read. 'How', ask Aston and Richmond, 'do we explain this substantial body of English biblical texts, and their sometimes open use, which seem to conflict so markedly with the church's determination to root out meddlers with vernacular scripture?' (p. 19). A n excellent question, which none of the contributors here seeks to address, but which craves an answer. Soon, m a y w e hope? Mary Dove School of English and American Studies University of Sussex Bartlett, Anne C. and Thomas H. BestuI, ed., Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation, Ithaca/London, Cornell U versity Press, 1999; pp. vi, 256; R.R.P. US$17.95, £12.50. The texts collected here, all composed in England between 1350 and 1450 reveal the variety of genres and approaches which characterised late medieval religious writing. Most of the writings were previously available only in manuscripts, early prints, or nineteenth-century editions. Except for the anonymous English treatise, Life ofSoul, and he Livre de Seyntz Medicines (Book ofHoly Medicines), composed in Anglo-Norman by Henry Duke of Lancaster in 1354, the works are translations or adaptations into Middle English from Latin originals, sometimes via intermediate French versions . Their rendering into modern English extends the liberal theme of accessibility which no doubt also motivated their medieval authors. The Middle English source texts are printed in an appendix. Considered in their cultural context, an approach encouraged by the volume's title and introduction, the selections participated in the outpouring of vernacular writings which articulated the Church's efforts to care pastorally for its people and to contain unrest. The Wycliffite Life of Soul and the aristocratic Livre again stand out, however, as different or opposed cultural expressions. Apart from The Fifteen Oes, a series of prayers addressed to Jesus on the cross, the selections are excerpts from longer compositions, some ofwhich were widely disseminated. For example, The Privity of the Passion was one of seven Middle English adaptations of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi, the most popular of which 160 Reviews was Nicholas Love's Mirror ofthe Blessed Life ofJesus Christ. The survival the Pseudo-Augustinian Soliloquies, Life ofSoul, and S y m o n Wynter's L of St Jerome in four or fewer manuscripts nevertheless militates against some editorial claims of popularity (p. 141). Professors Bartlett and BestuI suggest various reasons as to why devotional writings of this kind merit attention. They give access to a range of social rankings and attitudes, clerical and lay, male and female, orthodox and heterodox. The complex internal discourses of these texts mediated an exceptionally unstable period in English history, sometimes offering 'sites of resistance to prevailing norms' (p. 14). Finally, such writings provide a context for interpreting the canonical literature of the period: 'We believe that it is impossible to assess the importance of a given author 's or text's cultural value without knowing where their contributions intersect with and depart from established and popular traditions' (p. 14). While all of these claims have merit, the diverse richness of the selections goes beyond them, a point which the editors also admit. A simple and passionate longing for the divine, antithetical to present-day intellectual circumspection, is the fundamental impetus behind several texts. In the Soliloquies this looks back to St. Augustine: 'when I seek m y G o d I seek a beauty, a brightness, a love, a spiritual sweetness that fleshly eyes m a y not see' (p. 54). It is a sign of the volatility of the period that the Middle English translator, w h o apparently wrote for a group of religious w o m e n , felt impelled to interleave such passages with commentaries reaffirming orthodox views on predestination, images in churches, the sacrament of the altar, clerical intervention in interpreting Scripture, and God's justice in instituting eternal punishment. By contrast, Life of Soul inherently challenges several of these positions. The afterlife is a recurrent concern of the selections. As early capitalism gradually displaced the social arrangements of feudalism, the ancient doctrine of purgatory became enmeshed both in mercantile metaphors and in ecclesiastical commerce. This is amply demonstrated...