MYRROR TO DEVOUT PEOPLE (SPECULUM DEVOTORUM): AN EDITION WITH COMMENTARY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Paul J. Patterson, B.S., M.A. ______________________________ Jill Mann, Co-director _______________________________ Jesse Lander, Co-director Graduate Program in English Notre Dame, Indiana November 2006 © Copyright by Paul J. Patterson 2006 All Rights Reserved MYRROR TO DEVOUT PEOPLE (SPECULUM DEVOTORUM): AN EDITION WITH COMMENTARY Abstract by Paul J. Patterson This dissertation provides a new edition of the Mirror to Devout People , which survives in two manuscripts: Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame, MS 67 (ND) and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.1.6 (C). Two previous editions of this text were completed as unpublished dissertations. Bridget Ann Wilsher’s 1956 University of London dissertation uses C as a base text and ND to fill in a lacuna; major variations in ND are noted. John Patrick Banks 1959 Fordham dissertation uses ND as the base text; major variations in ND are noted. In 1973, a partial edition edited by James Hogg was published as part of the Analecta Cartusiana series; it lacks the last one-third of the text. The present edition provides a full record of all variant readings in both manuscripts. Based on ND, it uses C to correct errors in sense and syntax, and also uses the sources to identify original readings. A glossary, which contains words that are not easily recognizable to readers of modern English, is included, as well as a complete glossary of all proper names. The full explanatory and textual notes identify for the first time almost all Latin and Middle English sources for the Mirror . The introduction to the edition Paul J. Patterson provides descriptions of both manuscripts and an overview of the ownership and circulation of the Mirror. The author of the Mirror was a Carthusian, probably of the London abbey of Sheen and the female religious for whom the work was composed was probably a Bridgittine nun at the neighboring house of Syon Abbey. ND seems to have been commissioned for a secular family, John Scrope, Fourth Baron of Masham and his wife Elizabeth. The original address to a Bridgittine nun of Syon Abbey is thus transformed into an address to a pious laywoman. Appropriate to its female audience, it draws on the works of “approued women,” such as Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, and Mechtild of Hackeborn. Asaresult, the Mirror to Devout People provides important insights into the production of religious writing in fifteenth century England and its transmission into secular ownership. For Richard, my father ii CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..............................................................................................iv INTRODUCTION..............................................................................................................1 MIRROR TO DEVOUT PEOPLE...................................................................................72 NOTES...........................................................................................................................245 GLOSSARY...................................................................................................................296 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………...324 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have many people to thank for their help in the making of this dissertation. William Watts first introduced me to medieval literature and Aron Aji taught me what it means to do rigorous scholarship. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my director, Jill Mann, who introduced me to the editing of medieval texts and acted as a meticulous reader of my work as I began to learn the field of textual criticism. Her skills as a scholar and teacher are a continued source of inspiration. Tony Edwards, Vincent Gillespie, Jesse Lander, and Maura Nolan were always available with encouragement and advice. My friends and colleagues at the University of Notre Dame all provided support and aid. Alice Wolfram’s help at a particularly difficult point in the project remains much appreciated. Support from a Medieval Academy of America and Richard III Society of America Shallek Dissertation Grant and from the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame’s Zahm Research Travel Grant, allowed me to spend significant time at Cambridge University, the University of Oxford, and the British Library. The staff in the Special Collections Department at the University of Notre Dame consistently gave of their time to aid my research. I am thankful for the support of my wife, Rebecca, who endures my endless interest in the Middle Ages with patience and grace. This dissertation is dedicated to my father, who raged bravely against the dying of the light. iv INTRODUCTION Part I: Contexts The Mirror to Devout People , or, more formally, the Speculum Devotorum , is a Carthusian Middle English life of Christ written in prose and divided into thirty-three chapters, in honor of the number of years Christ lived on earth. It is preserved in two manuscripts: Notre Dame, Indiana, University of Notre Dame, MS 67 (ND) and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.1.6 (C). ND is probably the earliest surviving copy of the Mirror and dates to 1430 or soon after. The armorial initial on the opening folio of ND indicates that it was commissioned by John Lord Scrope, Fourth Baron of Masham, possibly for his wife, Elizabeth Scrope. 1 C dates slightly later to around the late 1460s or early 1470s and is on paper rather than parchment. Neither manuscript was copied by the author, who probably began writing the Mirror within a few years after 1409, when the Carthusian monk Nicholas Love wrote his Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ , a work of devotional instruction that survived in more manuscripts than any other religious work of the fifteenth century. 2 The Mirror ’s author, who remains 1 I discuss the armorial initial in more detail in the “Manuscript Description” section at p. VI. For more on the Scrope connection to the Mirror , see also A. S. G. Edwards, “The Contexts of Notre Dame 67,” in The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers , ed. Jill Mann and Maura B. Nolan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 107-28. 2 Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ was one of only two vernacular works to be approved by Archbishop Arundel following the implementation of the Archbishop’s Constitutiones of 1409. For recent scholarship on Love and his Mirror see Nicholas Love at Waseda: Proceedings of the International Conference, 20-22 July 1995 , ed. Shoichi Oguro, Richard Beadle, and Michael Sargent (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997) and Nicholas Love, The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ: A Full Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686 with Introduction, Notes and Glossary , ed. Michael Sargent (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2005) . The full 1 anonymous, identifies himself as a Carthusian when he writes that “a man of oure ordyr of charturhowse” had already translated the pseudo -Bonaventure Meditationes Vitae Christi into English (C, f. 1r). 3 This reference to Love’s work differs slightly from ND’s corresponding passage, which omits the phrase “of charturhowse,” perhaps an indication of ND’s secular ownership. A Latin colophon in both ND and C, which indirectly refers to the House of Jesus of Bethlehem at Sheen, provides further evidence of the Mirror ’s Carthusian origin, and a note at the beginning of C further supports this assertion by identifying the manuscript as “liber domus Ihesu de Bethleem ordinis cartusiensis de Shene” and identifying the scribe as “Willielmus plenus amoris” (f. iii). 4 This is a reference to William Mede (d. 1474), a monk at the Charterhouse of Sheen who copied a number of manuscripts, was ordained as an acolyte in 1417, spent the majority of his career at Sheen, and died as a sacrist in 1474. 5 _______________________ critical edition of Love’s work provided in the Exeter Press edition considers a broader range of manuscripts. In the Exeter edition, Sargent replaces his original stemma with an updated version. As a result, the Exeter edition replaces the edition found in Nicholas Love's Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional Mss 6578 and 6686 , ed. Michael Sargent (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992). For more on Arundel’s Constitutions, see Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70 (1995), 822-64. 3 All manuscript citations will appear within the text and a distinction between C and ND will be maintained. 4 The two Latin colophons are reproduced in the manuscript descriptions at pp. iii-vii of the “Introduction.” 5 For more on Mede, see A. I. Doyle, “Book Production by the Monastic Orders in England ( c. 1375-1530): Assessing the Evidence,” in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence , ed. Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills, California: The Red Gull Press, 1990), 1-19. Doyle provides a plate of C’s note concerning William Mede at p. 13, fig. 8. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, A List of Surviving Books, edited by N. R. Ker: A Supplement to the Second Edition , ed. Andrew G. Watson (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, 1987) provides