Reginald Pecock Research Articles

The Donation of Constantine in John Whethamstede’s Granarium

Abstract This article analyses the discussion of the Donation of Constantine contained in the Granarium, an encyclopedia compiled by the abbot of St. Albans, John Whethamstede, in the 1430s. Particular attention is given to Whethamstede’s list of reasons to doubt the veracity of the Donation, which differ in certain ways from the contemporaneous and better known criticisms of the Donation made by Nicolas of Cusa, Lorenzo Valla and Reginald Pecock. The article considers the sources and motivations for Whethamstede’s discussion, which reveals that criticism of the Donation was more widespread and more deeply rooted at this time than has previously been appreciated.

Judicial Processes for and against Bishop Reginald Pecock: New Perspectives on the Mechanisms of His Downfall

Judicial Processes for and against Bishop Reginald Pecock: New Perspectives on the Mechanisms of His Downfall

Defending Images in Pecock's Repressor: Caritas, the Absent Friend and the Sense of Touch

Reginald Pecock's defense of orthodox practices in the Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy is grounded in the biblical commandment to love God, which, following Thomas Aquinas's thoroughly Aristotelianized theology, is understood as friendship of man and Images are key tools—proxies for forms of presence—in the dual processes of learning and recollection that are needed to mediate friendship with God. In this context, the efficacy of physical images derives from the structures of human memory and imagination, which are reliant on sensory perception: physical sight thus aids the imaginative work of making present something that is absent. The paradigm of caritas as friendship surfaces powerfully in the Repressor's defense of images: Christ is the absent friend, an image of whom offers a form of presence essential to imagining, and so to loving, him. Aristotelian friendship's emphasis on presence and proximity, however, underpins Pecock's advocacy of the value of the physical image not just in terms of its appeal to the sense of sight, but also to the sense of touch: love for a friend, ordinarily fostered by presence and completed in touch, is mediated between God and man not only by seeing but also through touching an image. That Pecock's arguments about the lawfulness of image-use culminate in a powerful defense of those who caress and kiss images registers not only the strength of Lollard objection to touching images in fifteenth-century controversy, but also the under-recognized importance of touch to medieval understandings of memory, cognition, and love.

"Ech good gramarien hath power to construe Scripture": Grammar and the Vernacular in the Theology of Reginald Pecock

This article argues that Reginald Pecock, fifteenth-century bishop of Chichester, calls upon his scholastic background to present a grammatical justification for a theological vernacular. However, in attempting to justify the vernacular, Pecock finds himself confronting the specter of John Wyclif and the shadow that the posthumously condemned cleric casts over any form of lay education. Pecock is so anxious to prove himself non-Wycliffite that he seeks to control the interpretations of his texts in very Wycliffite fashions, a choice that characterizes his paradoxical approach to the task of vernacularizing theology.

Body Talk: Gestures of Emotion in Late Medieval England

AbstractThe affective turn in medieval studies has produced insightful scholarship into the embodied nature of late medieval religious life. While considerable attention has been paid to emotions, senses and feelings, little dedicated focus has been pinpointed on gestures and how they figure in such phenomenological perspectives. This essay seeks to illuminate some of the means by which bodily motions, particularly those mimicking biblical figures, were perceived to heighten the emotional responsiveness of devout fifteenth‐century Christians. The kinesthetic empathy detailed in the work of Reginald Pecock, Nicholas Love and Margery Kempe underlines the widespread contemporary belief in the transformative power of performance. It highlights the need to consider motion, and particularly gestural imitation, as a primary mode of emotional engagement with Christ and his followers.

Writing Faith and Telling Tales: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Work of Thomas More. Thomas Betteridge. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. ix+256.

<i>Writing Faith and Telling Tales: Literature, Politics, and Religion in the Work of Thomas More</i>. Thomas Betteridge. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. ix+256.

Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture ed. by Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa

Reviewed by: Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture ed. by Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa Alexandra Barratt Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, ed. Medicine, Religion and Gender in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. xv + 293 pp. $99.00 (978-1-84384-401-3). This volume of eleven essays sets out to investigate “the interaction of medieval medicine and religion in the Middle Ages” (p. 2), a milieu in which sin and sickness were closely related. The editor’s introduction includes a useful literature review as well as introducing the subsequent material. Then follow two essays on Mary the Physician. Diane Watt argues that in medieval England the idea of Maria medica helped validate women’s healing role. Unfortunately, the textual evidence adduced for the figure of Mary as a medical doctor is debatable (“matronam” [p. 34] is an unusual term for the Virgin), while the presence of women as nurses and herbalists in the Paston letters is unsurprising. Roberta Magnani turns to Chaucer, arguing that his Marian theology is unorthodox as he gives the Virgin an [End Page 547] authoritative and more than “assistive” role in redemption. In The Physician’s Tale she is aligned with the goddess Natura, although, as the author admits, evidence of their identification is “hard to come by” (p. 57). Undeterred by the explicitly pagan context of this tale, Magnani associates its heroine Virginia with the Virgin and sees its narrator, the physician, as exploring ideas of authority. Part II, on women’s mysticism and metaphors of sickness, contains three essays. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa usefully discusses medical imagery in The Book of Ghostly Grace, the Middle English translation of Mechtild of Hackeborn’s Latin text. She argues that Mechtild had medical knowledge and believed in the therapeutic value of sensory experiences, especially music, delightful scents, and sweet ointments. Liz Herbert McAvoy writes on confession as spiritual medicine and female blood-sheddings in anchoritic and other texts that she sees as united by “a maternally-focused ideology of blood-based rebirth and salvation” (p. 100). With splendid clarity and a refreshing lack of jargon Juliette Vuille argues that mental illness is a social construct and it is therefore unwise to diagnose it retrospectively in medieval women mystics such as Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, especially as their behavior was considered “sane” by contemporaries. Part III contains two essays on fifteenth-century poetry and theological prose. Takami Matsuda writes on the blind poet John Audelay. Possibly influenced by Saint Bridget of Sweden, he saw bodily illness as an infallible means of healing spiritual sickness that could extend into purgatory, or alternatively mitigate its pains. Louise Bishop writes on the medieval understanding of the physiological nature and function of the heart, which is very different from our own, and its relevance to Reginald Pecock, an unorthodox fifteenth-century English bishop. Parts I to III are predominantly contributed by specialists in literary texts, especially those written in English. Part IV, on disfigurement and disability, is more the preserve of historians of medicine. Irina Metzler writes on medieval attempts to explain the etiology of birth defects: blame was usually laid on the parents, particularly some moral or physical failing of the mother, and deformity was commonly seen as stemming from aberrant sexual practices. Patricia Skinner writes on actual or threatened self-mutilation of the face in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century lives of Margaret of Hungary, Margaret of Cortona, and Oda of Brabant, and possible connections with judicial punishment. Joy Hawkins writes on medieval attitudes toward blindness, which was sometimes seen both as a spiritual privilege and as an opportunity for others to exercise compassion. Elma Brenner examines the often long-term pastoral and palliative care offered people with leprosy (especially women) in French and English leprosaria: these were essentially religious communities, as the cause of the disease was considered to be sexual overindulgence. Denis Renevey provides a sane afterword that largely summarizes the preceding contributions. He also highlights the “gender” aspect of this collection, otherwise only intermittently present in spite of the title, and draws out other connections between the individual essays. The volume might have benefited from more attention to medieval attitudes toward suffering in general (as found...

English and Latin Lexical Innovations in Reginald Pecock’s Corpus

This article examines the Middle English and Latin word formations of Bishop Reginald Pecock (d. 1459). In particular, it addresses the false assumption that Pecock was intentionally writing in an English that was primarily Germanic in etymology. The article concludes that Pecock’s lexical innovations were primarily Latinate, that he was unlikely to be concerned with the “purity” of his word formation, and that it was highly unlikely that he was trying to eschew Latinate vocabulary. These conclusions were ascertained through a comprehensive assessment of Pecock’s vocabulary which shows that Pecock created 715 new words out of a total estimated vocabulary of 7273 words. To put it another way, roughly 10 % of Pecock’s vocabulary was composed of neologisms of his own making. Finally, it demonstrates that the lexical practices that Pecock puts to work in his English word formations are also at work in his Latin word formations.

“Give the Reason for the Hope that you Have”: Reginald Pecock’s Challenge to (Non)Disputing Lollards

Medieval scholars are in broad agreement about Lollardy’s academic roots and its familiarity with disputational techniques; contemporaries also recognized these characteristics of the movement. It is surprising, then, to find that Bishop Reginald Pecock, the most vocal and persistent of Lollardy’s fifteenth-century opponents, accused Lollards of resisting sincere, reasonable, and academically informed debate and of refusing to offer a clear defense of their own opinions. This article considers how and why Pecock made this unusual accusation. It examines Pecock’s view of the “processes” of reason and suggests that, by characterizing Lollards as those who reject these processes, Pecock was able to clearly distinguish his own theological project from theirs. Pecock’s project, outlined in his written works, encompasses education, Christian community, and church renewal, and places debate and discussion at its center. By emphasizing Lollard refusal to engage in true and earnest discussion, Pecock tapped into a tradition that identified a failure to clearly communicate as a mark of the heretic’s isolation from the wider Christian community. Pecock’s vision, by way of contrast, actively promotes an alternative communal model of lay learning that fosters orthodoxy and respect between clergy and laity.

Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages ed. by Dallas G. Denery, II, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman (review)

Reviewed by: Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages ed. by Dallas G. Denery, II, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman Lola Sharon Davidson Denery, Dallas G., II, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds, Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages (Disputatio, 14), Turnhout, Brepols, 2014; hardback; pp. viii, 345; 10 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €90.00; ISBN 9782503547763. This book originated in a research project and workshop examining uncertain knowledge in the Middle Ages. The papers fall broadly into two camps, philosophical and literary. The editors’ Introduction makes clear that this breadth arises from an explicit strategy aimed at exploring both the role played by scepticism in the scholastic production of authorised knowledge and the subversion of that institutional knowledge by vernacular and lay cultural players. The focus is determinedly epistemological and largely ignores the vexed and voluminous subject of religious orthodoxy and heresy. Dallas G. Denery II opens the discussion with John of Salisbury’s meditations on the attitude of the superior man in an environment, namely the court, rendered inherently deceptive by flattery and illusory pleasures. Denery sees in John a continuing humanist tradition masked by the ascendancy of scholasticism until its resurgence in the early modern era. Eileen C. Sweeney looks at the reception of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics by Grosseteste and Roger Bacon whose move to privilege scientific knowledge, and thereby implicitly problematise other forms, was resisted by the Summa fratris Alexandri and William of Auvergne’s championing of faith as the only possible certainty. Dominik Perler brings us to medieval considerations of the classical grounds of scepticism through Walter Chatton’s and William Ockham’s responses to Peter Aureol’s attempt to account for sensory illusions by mediated perception. Perler concludes that radical scepticism was impossible within an Aristotelian framework committed to the reliability of our natural capacities. Christophe Grellard continues this theme with John Buridan’s explanation of how it is possible to believe falsely. Buridan sympathetically employed the figure of the ‘little old woman’ to explain how habit, social pressure, and imagination might combine to distort perception and permit false belief. Concluding the more strictly philosophical section, Rita Copeland reveals the difficulty commentators, such as Giles of Rome, Buridan, and even the translator, William of Moerbeke, had in situating Aristotle’s Rhetoric within the Ciceronian rhetorical tradition. Notwithstanding Aristotle’s placing it under logic, the manuscript tradition preferred to group it with ethics and politics. Lesley Smith bridges the shift from the scholastic to the literary by looking at uncertainty in the study of the Bible. Medieval scholars were aware that they were dealing with fallible translations from unreliable texts and not all were content to resolve problems by allegorising. Nicholas of Lyra turned to a rabbi for the cultural background of the Bible. William of Auvergne and Richard and Hugh of St Victor sought rational explanations of biblical stories while accepting that uncertainty would persist. [End Page 232] Karen Sullivan shifts the focus to vernacular literature with Robert de Boron’s Merlin. Rejecting a rationalist denunciation of Merlin as diabolically inspired, Boron draws on a contemplative perspective that employs the prophet’s mysterious nature to valorise intellectual humility and faith. Helen Swift continues this perspective in her chapter on love poetry. The lover’s desire renders him peculiarly incapable of discerning the truth but this inability is itself willed for: the continuance of uncertainty is the precondition for the continuance of desire. Jean de Meun, Chaucer, and Lydgate are the subject of Nicolette Zeeman’s contribution. She sees these authors turning the weapons of the scholastic philosophers against them in a systematic problematising of sanctioned epistemological, moral, social, and gender hierarchies. Next, Mishtooni Bose focuses on the role of opinion in the vernacular philosophical and moral works of Christine de Pizan and Bishop Reginald Pecock. Notwithstanding the Introduction’s disclaimer, Kantik Ghosh addresses heresy and the policing of intellectual debate in the trials of Richard Fleming, Jerome of Prague, and Jan Hus, all of whom were accused of following Wyclif. Fleming successfully defended himself on the grounds of academic debate, but Hus and Jerome found arguments for academic freedom powerless against the Inquisition and...

Kirsty Campbell The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual CommunitiesThe Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities. Kirsty Campbell. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Pp. xi+310.

<i>Kirsty Campbell</i> The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities<i>The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities</i>. Kirsty Campbell. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Pp. xi+310.

J. Patrick Hornbeck II. What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England. Kirsty Campbell. The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities.

Both of these books make a valuable contribution to their shared field of study. While, as its author states at the outset, What Is a Lollard? is largely concerned with terminology, The Call to Read explores Reginald Pecock's response to the Lollard challenge of his time, and combined they have much to tell us about the forms and experience of dissent in late medieval England. The phenomenon of Lollard heresy and Pecock's writings were alike rooted in the conviction, shared by Wyclif's followers and their opponents, that theological issues belonged on the page as well as to oral statement. Beliefs might be contested as well as shared, but in both cases they were written as well as delivered by word of mouth. Later medieval English dissent and its refutation were fully paginated, and even if there were areas (maybe critical ones) that failed to transmit some of their secrets to later generations through the written record, the activities of hearing, reading, and voiced communication left plenty of evidence behind them.

Deferential Heresy: Reginald Pecock, William Thorpe, John Oldcastle, and the Danger of Deferring to Episcopal Authority in Late Medieval England

Deferential Heresy: Reginald Pecock, William Thorpe, John Oldcastle, and the Danger of Deferring to Episcopal Authority in Late Medieval England

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities. By KirstyCampbell. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2010, $33.69.

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities. By KirstyCampbell. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2010, $33.69.

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities (review)

The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock’s Books and Textual Communities (review)

Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300-1550 ed. by Elisabeth Salter and Helen Wicker (review)

Reviewed by: Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300-1550 ed. by Elisabeth Salter and Helen Wicker Rebecca F. McNamara Salter, Elisabeth and Helen Wicker, eds, Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1300-1550 (Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, 17), Turnhout, Brepols, 2011; hardback; pp. vi, 335; 11 b/w illustrations, 1 b/w table; R.R.P. €70.00; ISBN 9782503528830. 'Language' is conspicuously absent from the title of Elisabeth Salter and Helen Wicker's edited collection. One realizes, however, that 'vernacularity' is indicative of the welcome scope of its contents. The vernacular receives due linguistic scrutiny, but it is also treated alongside national origin myths, devotional experience, architectural description and urban identity, and political enfranchisement. Wicker's Introduction elaborates these strands and contextualizes their place within the growing field of 'vernacular studies'. Michael Clanchy opens the volume's first section, 'Reading and Writing', with an analysis of England's ABC primers. He considers their devotional [End Page 336] and cultural functions and their differences from continental counterparts. Amanda Moss's essay explores the combined inflections of orthodox and heterodox thought found in a fifteenth-century devotional anthology. A 'Complaint of Christ' poem across six manuscripts is described by Salter to demonstrate evidence for vernacular practices within contexts of wider devotional reading. Assembled as 'Religious Experiences', contributions from Sarah James, Rob Lutton, and Stewart Mottram engage with vernacular practices of theological writing in England. James highlights 'chronic instability' in Reginald Pecock's idea of the vernacular, and Lutton breaks traditional boundaries of vernacular scholarship by discussing a multi-genre range of media devoted to the Holy Name of Jesus. Mottram contextualizes Wyatt's Penitential Psalms within contemporary prefaces to English Bibles, showing that clarity was neither the goal nor the product in many cases of vernacular translation. 'Political Issues' begins with Wicker's account of treasonable language trials alongside developing political identities and enfranchisement. Helen Fulton gives a masterful survey of medieval Welsh literature, focusing on gentry writer-patron networks and the tensions and integrations of nonnative origin myths into vernacular Welsh traditions. Our perspective of language in central English government is reoriented by Dodd's refreshing assessment of the political and linguistic nature of the records, a review that refutes the theory of a Lancastrian Chancery English standardization policy. In the volume's final section, 'Conceptual Vocabularies', Jayne Rimmer discusses housing in York and Norwich, highlighting differences and similarities in the language of urban dwellings of the wealthy and poor, and across regional areas. Andrew Butcher's analysis of a Canterbury Cathedral administration book includes an index of its English words and posits vernacular behaviour as informing the creation and collection of its documents. Concluding with remarks from Ian Johnson, this collection creatively emphasizes the vernacular aspects and the non-homogeneous nature of late medieval English and Welsh cultures. Its approaches and scope will provide valuable direction for further studies of vernacularity. [End Page 337] Rebecca F. McNamara Medieval and Early Modern Centre The University of Sydney Copyright © 2012 by the Author

Form and Reform: Reading Across the Fifteenth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Form and Reform: Reading Across the Fifteenth Century Amanda J. Gerber Form and Reform: Reading Across the Fifteenth Century, ed. Shannon Gayk and Kathleen Tonry (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press 2011) xii + 222 pp. Research about fifteenth-century literature has traditionally focused on the socio-political nature of writing during the tumultuous end of the Middle Ages. Shannon Gayk and Kathleen Tonry’s essay collection, Form and Reform: Reading Across the Fifteenth Century, encourages its readers to look beyond this critical rut to note both the formalist and reformative aspects of fifteenth-century literature. Incorporating articles about authors such as Osbern Bokenham and John Capgrave, Gayk and Tonry develop the critical field beyond its customary focus on John Lydgate and John Metham. While Lydgate and Metham remain ever-present throughout the book, the contributors make a conscious effort to broaden the scope of fifteenth-century literary studies, even extending the period to include John Skelton—whose poems cross well into the sixteenth century. This collection thus aspires both to integrate new texts into the fifteenth-century canon and to introduce new interpretive methods for analyzing them. Tonry’s introduction postulates that previous scholarship about fifteenth-century texts provides limited conclusions about a diverse and complex literary period. Initiating her discussion with Lydgate, Tonry acknowledges that most perceptions about this era are predicated on this one English monk. She then moves through the history of formalism studies, laying the groundwork for the book’s methodology. The first two essays explicitly pursue these formalist paradigms, looking at both readers and epistolary styles in relation to the material form of two fifteenth-century manuscripts. Jessica Brantley’s article, “Forms of Reading in the Book of Brome,” analyzes the appearance of the words on the page of the Book of Brome’s Abraham and Isaac play, relating the drama’s physical relationship to the context of the Brome manuscript in which it is found. Brantley argues that the rubricators’ marks for the Abraham and Isaac play indicate that it was intended for private readers well versed in typological exegesis. The next entry, Andrew Cole’s “The Style of Humanist Latin Letters at the University of Oxford: On Thomas Chaundler and the Epistolae Academicae Oxon. (Registrum F),” takes a more expansive approach to [End Page 197] fifteenth-century formalist criticism, attempting to redeem humanist Latin and to revise A. G. Rigg’s arbitrary delineation of 1422 as the end of the period. To elevate and lengthen Latin humanism, Cole suggests that the dullness trope, which modern criticism has discussed about fifteenth-century English vernacular poetry, was actually more pronounced in humanist Latin letters. Focusing particularly on the letters of Thomas Chaundler in the Epistolae Academicae Oxon., Cole argues that these works combined classicizing forms of expression with supplicating appeals in a manner more advanced than anything seen just a few decades before Chaundler wrote them. The next three studies address forms of devotion, beginning with Karen A. Winstead’s “Osbern Bokenham’s ‘englische boke’: Re-forming Holy Women.” Winstead compares Bokenham’s thirteen original saints’ lives, called Legends of Holy Women, to his version of Jacobus de Voraine’s Legenda aurea in order to illustrate how Bokenham revises his thinking about the efficacy of teaching and preaching. Winstead proposes that Bokenham’s altered convictions correspond with a larger group of thoughtful clergy who reevaluated their beliefs and the meaning of orthodox Christianity in response to Reginald Pecock’s heresy. Rather than reveal how devotional writers influence each other, Shannon Gayk’s essay analyzes John Capgrave’s Life of Saint Katherine as a representative of the general tenants of fifteenth-century vernacular invention. Gayk’s “‘Ete this book’: Literary Consumption and Poetic Invention in John Capgrave’s Life of Saint Katherine” examines alimentary metaphors that were common in rhetorical texts to demonstrate how Capgrave collects exegetical, rhetorical, and poetic devices to note their limited value—thereby requiring readers to work to produce literary meaning. The last essay in this section about devotion, Rebecca Krug’s “Jesus’ Voice: Dialogue and Late-Medieval Readers,” juxtaposes literary conversations with Jesus from The Fifteen Oes, Margery Kempe’s Book, and the first English vernacular translation of the...

Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England

Image, Text, and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England

Kirsty Campbell. The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. xii + 310 pp. index. append. bibl. $38. ISBN: 978–0–268–02306–5.

Kirsty Campbell. The Call to Read: Reginald Pecock's Books and Textual Communities. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. xii + 310 pp. index. append. bibl. $38. ISBN: 978–0–268–02306–5. - Volume 64 Issue 4