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Linguam Ad Loquendum: Writing a Vernacular Identity in Medieval And LINGUAM AD LOQUENDUM: WRITING A VERNACULAR IDENTITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Erin Kathleen Wagner, M.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Richard Firth Green, Advisor Karen Winstead Ethan Knapp Hannibal Hamlin Copyright by Erin Kathleen Wagner 2015 ABSTRACT The status of the English language in late medieval England is a complicated one. Even though used relatively comfortably by secular authors, like Chaucer and Gower, religious writers were constrained by the oversight of the church and its uneasiness concerning vernacular theological discourse. The purpose of this dissertation is to look more closely at the treatment of the English language across normal genre boundaries, bringing together texts of more secular authors like Chaucer and those of theological writers like Reginald Pecock. In doing so, this project highlights a universal concern with the issue of vernacular identity. The problem of English and what it could be used for was a high-profile one, affecting not only what language writers used, but also the topics they raised. While examining the presentation of the vernacular in my chosen texts, I argue that even texts traditionally considered to be confident in their use of English, like The Canterbury Tales, are preoccupied with the subject of unrestricted speech and the nature of the English language. ii Dedicated to my mother and father, Philip and Deborah Wagner iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without a network of academic, familial, and collegial support. I would like to thank first my advisor, Dr. Richard Firth Green, whose encyclopedic knowledge of the Middle Ages and willingness to entertain a thousand questions and ideas have been invaluable. He has read enough chapter drafts, cover letters, and job documents to merit more gratitude than I can even offer here. I am honored and grateful to have worked so closely with one of the most distinguished members of my field. The other members of my committee, Dr. Karen Winstead, Dr. Ethan Knapp, and Dr. Hannibal Hamlin, have sharpened my acumen and challenged me to produce my best work over and over. Without them, still flawed as it is, my dissertation would not be what it is today. More importantly, I would not be the student of literature I am now without the aid of this brilliant group of scholars. My mother and father, Philip and Deborah Wagner, have provided me with the care and upbringing that have made the pursuit of my doctorate possible. As my teachers in both middle-school and high-school, they provided a strong academic foundation for my current career. Their love has been unfailing and, without their care, I would not have made it through two graduate programs. This doctorate is as much a tribute to them as to any skill of my own. I would like to thank my sister, Lara Swain, as well, who has been generous, kind, and supportive throughout this process and long before. Thanks also to my grandparents, Dow and Betty Wagner, and Paul Miller, for their unwavering faith in my sure success. Of iv course, without the aid and love of my partner, Andrew Richmond, I would not be as sane as I am at this point in my degree. He is one of the most generous men I have ever met. Any graduate student unlucky enough to progress through a doctoral program without the humor and friendship of a coterie of colleagues would be a dismal sight by the time she graduated. Luckily that has not been my situation. I have been blessed to have been part of a warm group of colleagues and friends in the English Department at The Ohio State University. We have been a happy little family in office 547 and the halls of Denney. v VITA 2008 ........................................................................ B.A. English/English Education, Marietta College 2010 ........................................................................ M.A. English, Ohio University 2010 to present ..................................................... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University Publications “Deferential Heresy: Reginald Pecock, William Thorpe, John Oldcastle, and the Danger of Deferring to Episcopal Authority in Late Medieval England,” Essays in Medieval Studies 29 (2014): 85-102. “Divine Surgeons at Work: The Presence and the Purpose of the Dream Vision in Till We Have Faces,” Mythlore 32.2 (Spring/Summer 2014): 13-30. “Keeping It in the Family: Beowulf and the Tradition of Familicide in the Kin of Cain,” Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies (Spring 2013). Fields Study Major Field: English vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ......................................................................................................................... ii Dedication .................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... iv Vita ................................................................................................................................ vi Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 Section 1 Who Speaks and Who Listens: The Regulation of Dissident Speech Chapter 1. “A janglere speke of perilous mateere”: Silence and Vernacular Theology in Ricardian Literature and the Manciple’s Tale ...................................................... 18 Chapter 2. “He that is brent, men seyn, dredith the fyre”: De Haeretico Comburendo and the Development of a Critical Vernacular Orthodoxy in Dives and Pauper and Hoccleve’sThe Regiment of Princes ................................................................................................... 80 Section 2 Latinate English and Anglicized Latin: Crafting a Vernacular Grammar Chapter 3. “Not the ink written, neither the voice spoken”: Reginald Pecock and the Scholastic Validation and Circumscription of the Vernacular ....................... 137 Chapter 4. “And to hir he wrote a book”: Vernacular Theology and the Gendered Response to Heresy in John Capgrave’s Works............................................... 186 Section 3 Reading a Model of Faith: How the Printed Book and Lay Reading Changed the Definition of Christian Chapter 5. “Yet Printing Onely Wyl Subuert Your Doinges”: The Debate over Lay Literacy in More, Tyndale, and Foxe and the Changing Group Identity of Reformers .............................................................................................................. 239 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 297 vii INTRODUCTION Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants attaching each a different meaning to the same word—Samuel Taylor Coleridge A series of heresy trials took place in Norwich between 1428 and 1431. In those trials, almost sixty people were indicted on charges of “crimine lollardie et heretice” and forced to publicly abjure themselves.1 One of the men examined in 1429 was John Burell, son of the glover Richard Burell. The trial record begins with Burell’s admission that he had learned the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Creed in English: “iuratus dixit quod Thomas Burell, frater istius iurati, tribus annis elapsis docuit istum iuratum Pater, Ave et Credo in lingua Anglicana.”2 Additionally, Burell had been instructed by his brother on the Ten Commandments: “Item dicit quod idem frater suus docuit istum iuratum precepta Dei in lingua Anglicana, et quod in primo mandato continetur quod nullus honor est exhibendus aliquibus ymaginibus sculptis in ecclesiis per manus hominum.”3 John Baker, another defendant examined eighteen days prior, is charged with possessing a book that contains in it the “Pater Noster et Ave Maria et Credo in lingua Anglicana.”4 In the same series of trials, 1 Ed. Norman P. Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-1431, Camden Fourth Series, vol. 20 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1977), pp. 7-10, 70. 2 My translation: “The sworn witness said that Thomas Burell, the brother of the witness, had taught the witness the Pater, Ave, and Creed in the English language after he was three years old”; Tanner, ed. “Johannes Burell, famulus Thome Mone,” Heresy Trials, p. 73. 3 My translation: “Item; he said that the same brother had taught the witness the precepts of God in the English language, and that in the first commandment it was contained that there was no honor to be exhibited in other images in church sculpted by man’s hands”; Tanner, ed., “Johannes Burell, famulus Thome Mone,” Heresy Trials, p. 73. 4 Tanner, ed., “Johannes Baker alias Ussher de Tunstale,” Heresy Trials, p. 69. 1 Robert Bert is examined on account of his ownership of Dives and Pauper, a vernacular commentary on the Ten Commandments.5 More than the text itself, comments written into the margins were identified as erroneous by the priest present.6 Margery Baxter, according to the testimony of her neighbor, had discussed the gospel in English with a friar.7 All of this behavior—writing, speaking, and learning—was deemed potentially heretical because of the language in which it was performed and what that language represented. Lay theological
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