Language, Lineage and Location in the Works of Osbern Bokenham [1 ed.] 9781443845373, 9781443842600

Citation preview

Language, Lineage and Location in the Works of Osbern Bokenham

Language, Lineage and Location in the Works of Osbern Bokenham

By

Alice Spencer

Language, Lineage and Location in the Works of Osbern Bokenham, by Alice Spencer This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Alice Spencer All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4260-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4260-0

For Cai and Dylan

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Chapter One Introduction: Identity and Community in Space and Time Part One....................................................................................................... 3 Osbern Bokenham: Emerging from the “Angle of Oblyuyoun” Part Two ...................................................................................................... 9 The Discovery of the Abbotsford Manuscript and its Implications Part Three .................................................................................................. 15 The Angelic Margins and the Inclusiveness of the Exemplary: Authority, Community and Identity Chapter Two Language: Etymology, the Vernacular and the Poetic Voice Part One..................................................................................................... 29 Introduction Part Two .................................................................................................... 37 Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea Part Three .................................................................................................. 55 Etymology, National Identity and the Mother Tongue in the Mappula Angliae and the Lives of Native Saints Part Four .................................................................................................... 61 Natural Language and Orthodoxy

viii

Table of Contents

Chapter Three Lineage Part One..................................................................................................... 65 Introduction Part Two .................................................................................................... 67 Genealogy, Gender and Nation Part Three .................................................................................................. 79 Genealogy, Gender and Succession Part Four .................................................................................................... 83 Gender, Fertility and Language Chapter Four Location Part One..................................................................................................... 93 Introduction Part Two .................................................................................................... 95 Sanctity and Nation Part Three ................................................................................................ 101 Gender, Vernacular and Nation Part Four .................................................................................................. 103 Geographical Space, Authority and Experience Part Five .................................................................................................. 109 Translating Corpses and Corpora Part Six .................................................................................................... 115 Textual Spaces: Number, Form and the Trinity Conclusion............................................................................................... 121 Notes........................................................................................................ 123 Bibliography............................................................................................ 125 Index........................................................................................................ 131

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I wish to thank the Faculty of Advocates for providing me with a microfilm copy of the Abbotsford manuscript. My thanks also go to the staff of CSP for their swift handling of my proposal and constant support throughout the various stages of the preparation of this volume. In addition, I would like to thank my colleague, Adriana Teresa Damascelli, for her patience and generosity in responding to my many IT-related queries. A number of the ideas published in this book were first aired at international conferences. I presented an outline of my ideas for this book, entitled “Etymology, Genealogy and Geography in the Abbotsford Legenda Aurea” at the Medieval Translator Conference in Padua in 2010 and received many useful suggestions from the delegates there. An earlier version of my work on Bokenham’s lives of native saints was presented at the SAMEMES conference on Medieval and Early Modern Authorship in Geneva in 2010 and subsequently published in the proceedings. I wish to thank the delegates who attended the session for their valuable input and Lukas Erne and Guillemette Bolens for their useful editorial suggestions. As always, I would like to thank Ruth Anne Henderson for her precious ongoing support in matters academic and otherwise.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY IN SPACE AND TIME

PART ONE OSBERN BOKENHAM: EMERGING FROM THE “ANGLE OF OBLYUYOUN”

In the Arundel “Prologue” to his Life of St. Margaret, Bokenham writes: Certeyn the auctour was an austyn frere, Whos name as now I ne wyl expresse, Ne hap that the vnwurthynesse Bothe of hys persone & eek hys name Myht make the werk to be put in blame, And so, for hate of hym and eek despyht, Perauenture fewe shuld haue delyht It to redyn, and for this chesoun Throwyn it in the angle of oblyuyoun (Serjeantson 1938, 32-40).

The last five hundred and fifty odd years of literary history have proved Bokenham’s fears to be well-founded. Bokenham’s oeuvre has continued to occupy a particularly neglected and dusty corner of the medieval literary canon, as perhaps witnessed most sharply by the fate of his magnum opus – his vast translation of the Legenda Aurea. To quote Simon Horobin: These lines have a prophetic quality, given the fate of [Bokenham’s] major work, which has languished untouched and unread for the last 200 years in a corner of Walter Scot’s library (Horobin 2005).

Like the smaller collection known until now as Legendys of Hooly Wummen and preserved in Arundel 37, the Abbotsford Legenda Aurea, has survived in a single manuscript, purchased by Sir Walter Scott at Sotheby’s in 1809 and unattributed and unstudied until it was brought to the attention of Simon Horobin by the Faculty of Advocates in 2004 (Horobin 2008: 135). So who exactly was this self-proclaimedly marginal, shadowy figure, Osbern Bokenham? We can deduce his date of birth from the Arundel

4

Part One

prologue to his life of St. Margaret, which he tells us he began on 7 September 1443 (Serjeantson 1938: 187-91). In the same prologue, Bokenham also tells us that he is fifty years old (248). In the closing stanza of his life of St. Faith, Bokenham asks that the saint grant some special favour to the aging author of the vita, who was born on her day: And specyaly, lady, for þi passyoun, Shewe hem þe grace of singulere fauour Wych in-to ynglyssh of pure deuocyoun Of þi legend was þe translatour. Graunth hym, lady, in hys last our Of lyuyng so to be clensyd fro synne Wych on þi day to lyuyn fyrst dyde begyn (Serjeantson 1938: 4028-34; Abbotsford MS fol. 202r).

Thus, to quote Delany, “if he was anticipating his full fifty by a month, he was born in 1393” (Delany 1998: 5). As far as his date of death is concerned, the last extant documentary reference to Bokeham is in the 1463 will of ȳohn Baret of Bury, which was not probated until 1467, at which point it still contained the bequest to Bokenham (ibid). We know that Bokenham attained his baccalarius degree at Cambridge on March 21, 1423 and that he proceeded to attain a magister degree (Delany 1998: 7). This was a particularly high academic achievement for an English member of the Augustinian order in the 15th century. As Winstead writes of Capgrave, who obtained the same degree: In 1421 … [he] was granted permission to attend Oxford or Cambridge, and enrolled at Cambridge. Attaining such permission was not in itself a great achievement, for each English limes was entitled to nominate four students per year both to Oxford and Cambridge. However, achievement of the highest academic degree, the magisterium, was strictly rationed by the universities themselves. Each mendicant order was only allowed one magister of theology every two years by each university. Moreover, the Augustinians allocated half of their Oxbridge quota to non-English candidates (Winstead 2007: 3).

Delany suggests that Bokenham may have received his early education in Norwich as a novice at the house of Austin canons at Old Buckenham in Norfolk, since this house was but “a few miles north of the Suffolk line” and “people not infrequently took the town’s name as their surname” (ibid: 6). From at least 1427, he was resident at the Augustinian priory at Clare in East Anglia (ibid: 8).

Osbern Bokenham: Emerging from the “Angle of Oblyuyoun”

5

As far as his literary oeuvre goes, we know that Bokenham was the author of the vitae of female saints collected in the British Library Arundel 37 MS, edited by Mary S. Serʁeantson for the Early English Text Society in 1938 and published under the title Legendys of Hooly Wummen. These legends, beginning with the life of St. Margaret in 1443, were collected together in a single manuscript for Friar Thomas Burgh and given to his sister, resident “at an unspecified convent of nuns” in 1447 (ibid: 33). Bokenham reveals his authorship of the Mappula Angliae, a translation of part of Higden’s Polychronicon, which survives uniquely in BL Harley 4011, fols. 144r-163r (Horstmann 1887) through an acrostic. Edwards and Delany have both presented convincing arguments for Bokenham’s authorship of the only extant Middle English translation from Claudian, the parallel text translation of the De Consulatu Stilichonis preserved in British Library, MS Additional 11814 (Flugel 1905; Edwards 2001; Delany 1996). Also convincingly attributed to Bokenham is the so-called “Clare Roll” or “Dialogue at the Grave of Dame ȳoan of Acres,” a dialogue between a secular and a monk, which details the genealogical descent of the lords of Clare down to Richard of York (Barnardiston 1962: 63-70). Finally, there is Bokenham’s massive and as-yet unedited translation of the Legenda Aurea, discovered by the Faculty of Advocates at Abbotsford House in 2004 and identified by Simon Horobin. This legendary includes both verse and prose vitae, and incorporates a large number of additional lives of native saints and of saints who were of a particular interest to Bokenham’s order into the original Legenda Aurea format. At least two other works by Bokenham remain lost. In his life of St. Anne he refers to another Latin poem “in balaade ryme,” which treats of Anne’s three daughters – the three Marys (Serʁeantson 1938: 2064-84). In the Abbotsford MS, the life of St. Thomas of Canterbury refers to a more extensive vita of the same saint by Bokenham (fol. 23v). As a vernacular writer of religious texts resident in East Anglia, we can assume that Bokenham was acutely aware of the problematic nature of his own linguistic-literary projects. Arundel’s promulgation of the Constitutions in 1409 had prohibited not only Bible translation but also unauthorised vernacular quotation from the Bible, at the same time as limiting any discussion of theological ideas. As Watson puts it, all this made writing any complex religious work in English difficult, especially for professional religious (in Wogan Browne et al. 1999: 343-4).

Delany recounts how Bokenham’s countrywoman, Margery Kempe, repeatedly had to defend herself from accusations of Lollardy, going on to

6

Part One

illustrate the tense climate in which Bokenham himself must have been working: In 1401, by the decree De Comburendo haereticis – intended specifically to combat the growing and subversive Lollard influence – heresy had become a capital crime in England. The climate was tense in the next decades, with numerous denunciations, investigations trials and abʁurations. In Norwich between 1428 and 1431, sixty men and women were interrogated, and in another investigation, also in Norwich and also in 1428, at least three were burned. A fourth burning occurred at Chelmsford in 1430, and others, not recorded, may well have taken place. One of Bokenham’s brothers at Clare, ȳohn Bury, earned credentials as a scourge of heretics by sitting as a commissioner at some of these trials (Delany 1998: 90-1).

Bokenham’ position was made yet more potentially precarious by the fact that he frequently wrote about female subʁects who are not only pious but are also evangelical – about women such as Katherine of Alexandria and Mary Magdalene who preach and engage in theological discussion – and that he did so for a network of pious and highly educated female patrons. East Anglia, as a region with a “rich feminine devotional culture” (Winstead 2007: 13), was very much at the forefront of the debate regarding feminine piety, erudition and evangelism in the fifteenth century. As Theresa Coletti writes, in East Anglia documented feminine challenges to ecclesiastical structures and traditional Christian doctrine occur more frequently than in any other region of late medieval England (Coletti 2004: 143).

Bokenham’s references to his patronal network in the Arundel manuscript, together with the support for Richard of York’s dynastic claims clearly evinced in the “Clare Roll” and the Claudian translation, also indicate that he was a decided partisan for the Yorkist cause. Although the so-called “Wars of the Roses” had yet to begin, there is a good deal of historical evidence that Richard of York and his supporters already nurtured clear dynastic ambitions by the mid-fifteenth century when Bokenham was writing (Ross: 1979). Strong Yorkist connections can be traced for Katherine and Elizabeth Howard and for Agatha Flegge, to whom the vitae of their respective namesakes are dedicated in the Arundel manuscript (Delany 1998: 18-22). In the account of the commissioning of the life of Mary Magdalene by Richard’s sister, Isabel Bourchier, in the Arundel “Prolocutory” and the lengthy genealogical passage which accompanies it (Serʁeantson 1938: 5004-19), Bokenham’s

Osbern Bokenham: Emerging from the “Angle of Oblyuyoun”

7

Yorkist sympathies emerge yet more clearly. As Delany and others have argued, the Claudian translation, which survives in a unique manuscript, illuminated with the badges of York and his immediate family, can be read as a piece of thinly veiled Yorkist propaganda (Delany 1996 and 1998: 133-9) – as an encomium to York’s military prowess, a vindication of his dynastic claims and ultimately an exhortation to power. The “Dialogue at the Grave” presents an extended genealogy of Richard of York, clearly also designed to support his dynastic claims (Delany 1998: 143-4; Hilles 2001: 200). Moreover, Horobin has presented a convincing argument that the Abbotsford collection was dedicated to Richard’s wife, Cecily Neville, (Horobin 2008: 150-1).

PART TWO THE DISCOVERY OF THE ABBOTSFORD MANUSCRIPT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

Bokenham studies pre-2004 tended to focus on three core fields: gender (largely due to the fact that the Arundel MS is an all female legendary), politics (i.e. Bokenham’s Yorkist affiliation) and anxiety of influence (Bokenham’s relationship with the Chaucer-Gower-Lydgate triumvirate). In addition to these thematic concerns, there was also a significant debate regarding whether or not the largest known collection of Bokenham’s legends, the Arundel MS, published by the EETS in 1938 with the title Legendys of Hooly Wummen, was to be considered as a single, carefully planned literary work or as a fairly random compilation of individual poems. First of all, I would agree with Horobin that the discovery of the Abbotsford MS pretty much definitively rules out Delany’s hypothesis that the Arundel MS should be read as a single, unitary work. Nine of the thirteen lives found in the Arundel MS also appear in the Abbotsford collection. These are: Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Dorothy, Margaret, Mary Magdalene, Christina, Faith and the 11,000 Virgins. Moreover, as Horobin observes, there is a good chance that all four of the remaining lives – those of Anne, Katherine, Cecilia and Elizabeth – were also present. As Horobin writes: Katherine, Cecilia and Elizabeth all have their feast days late in the liturgical year, appearing as numbers 1668, 169 and 172 in the Legenda Aurea. The final item from the Legenda found in the Abbotsford manuscript is All Souls (163), so it is likely that all three of these lives originally appeared in the Abbotsford MS in the quires that are now missing. The feast day for St. Anne is 26 ȳuly, between those of St Christopher and the Seven Sleepers (numbers 100 and 101) There is a quire missing at precisely this point in the Abbotsford manuscript, causing the omission of the end of St. Christina and probably the whole lives of ȳames the Greater, Christopher and the Seven Sleepers. It is therefore probable that the life of St Anne originally appeared in the collection in the quire that is now missing (Horobin 2008: 140).

10

Part Two

The Arundel texts, then, can no longer be read as constituting the architectonically elaborate textual edifice which Delany envisaged. Having said this, in the present study I will argue that Bokenham certainly does evince the intense preoccupation with textual structure which Delany’s reading suggests. The Derridan notion of the “idea of the book,” to which Delany briefly refers (Delany 1998: 27), will prove highly pertinent when we come to consider Bokenham’s depiction of his own poetic language and his deployment of numerical symbolism throughout his oeuvre. The Abbotsford MS also to some extent problematises our notions regarding Bokenham’s take on gender issues. As I have already remarked Bokenham’s interest for many scholars concerned with gender has centred on the notion that he was the author of an all female legendary (the Legendys of Hooly Wummen) and on his references to female patrons in many of the legends in that collection. As I have already argued, the fact that all of the legends in the Arundel MS very probably also appeared in the mixed gender Abbotsford MS calls into question the very identity of the Arundel collection as an all-female legendary. Moreover, in the Abbotsford MS Bokenham has removed all references to the commissioning of the individual legends (Horobin 2008: 143), resulting in the disappearance that the community of female patrons which emerges so clearly in the Arundel collection and which has been the focus of so much scholarship. Having said this, the Arundel “Prolocutorye into Marye Mawdelyns lyf” certainly does suggest that Bokenham, in a general sense, considered himself an author specifically of female saints’ lives “legendys […] of hooly wummen” (5038-40). It is surely noteworthy that of the sixteen verse lives in the collection, fourteen treat of female saints. Moreover, as I will demonstrate in Chapter Three of the present study, the legendary as a whole manifests a consistent and significant concern with fertility and the mother figure. Finally, if the Abbotsford MS was dedicated to Cecily Neville, there would very probably have been some kind of reference to the commissioning of the work by this female patron in the introductory and concluding sections, both of which are lost. The content of the Abbotsford manuscript might at first sight seem to suggest that Bokenham’s relationship with his poetic fathers, Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate, had become less of a central issue for him in this later compilation. In the Arundel manuscript, most of the passages in which Bokenham deploys the modesty topos with reference to his courtly predecessors occur in the introductory sections describing the commissioning of the vitae. All of these references are omitted from the

The Discovery of the Abbotsford Manuscript and its Implications

11

Abbotsford manuscript, with the result that the only direct reference to Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate is in the prologue to the life of St. Agnes, where Bokenham describes his banishment from the “motleyed mede” of rhetoric by a rather supercilious Pallas, who tells him that the “moste fresh floures” have already been gathered up by these “persones thre” (Serjeantson 1938: 4055; Abbotsford fol. 43r). In reality, I would argue that this lack of direct references to his poetic ancestry in the Abbotsford MS reflects not so much a change of attitude on Bokenham’s part as a fundamental difference between the two manuscripts. If the discovery of the Abbotsford manuscript categorically disproves Delany’s theory that Bokenham conceived of the so-called Legendys of Hooly Wummen as a unitary work, the first chapter of his Mappula Angliae clearly suggests that he did conceive of the Abbotsford collection in these terms. Bokenham here refers to the Abbotsford manuscript as the englische boke the whiche y haue compiled of legenda aurea and of oþer famous legends (Horstmann 1887: 6).

If the Arundel collection is a somewhat arbitrary compilation of individual religious pamphlets, the Abbotsford MS is defined by Bokenham as a single “boke.” Whereas each vita in the Arundel collection was conceived of as an individual work in itself, with its own introductory material, the Abbotsford manuscript presumably had a single prologue for the whole collection. Sadly, this has been lost, as the first leaves of the manuscript are missing. However, considering the prefatory material to the individual lives of the Arundel collection, it does not seem over speculative to suggest that this prologue might well have referred to Bokenham’s poetic ancestry. Bokenham certainly continues to oppose his own plain style to a more aureate, courtly literary style. In addition to the passage in the life of St. Agnes, quoted above, in the life of Saint Paul the Hermit we find the following example of the modesty topos, with Bokenham’s plain English being contrasted to ȳerome’s ornate Latin: If grace wil be my guyderesse And of life a while me list respite To translate I wil doo my busynesse Seynt Poulis life the first heremyte Al be hit symply I him endyte Which in wildirnesse with a devoute corage In goddis servise spent al his age.

12

Part Two And in this werk as nye as I kan The sentence to shwen is myn entencion Of blissid ȳerome that holy man Which mevid and stired with deuotion Of this life made a compilation In Latin endited ful craftily With rethorical coloris ful copiously (Abbotsford MS fol. 33v).

More generally, the Abbotsford manuscript reveals Bokenham to be a more cosmopolitan writer than he was previously believed to be (Horobin 2007; Winstead 2011). Bokenham has traditionally been considered a rather provincial figure – a product of his local milieu - largely as a result of his repeated autobiographical interpolations in the Arundel MS and his claim that he is writing “aftir þe language of Suthfolk speche” (Serjeantson 1938 4064; Abbotsford fol.43r). Notwithstanding this, we have always known that Bokenham was “something of a traveller,” as Serjeantson puts it (Serjeantson 1938: xv). The Arundel MS already refers to travels to Venice, Montefiascone and Santiago de Compostela. In the Abbotsford MS, Bokenham also recounts posthumous miracles recorded at the tomb of St. Nicholas in Tolentino, which Horobin suggests he may have visited when the general chapter of the Austin friars met there in 1459. The Abbotsford MS life of St. Laurence reveals that Bokenham also travelled to Rome “in Pope Martyns tyme” – i.e. some time before Pope Martin’s death in 1431 (Horobin 2007: 940). In addition to this, the Abbotsford MS also repeatedly refers to Bokenham’s experiences at various British shrines which, taken together with the proto-nationalistic rhetoric of the Mappula Angliae (on which more later) would seem to suggest that we should attribute to Bokenham a national, as well as a regional identity. Horobin points to some particularly interesting connections between Bokenham and Wales – or at least the Welsh border town of Chester. One of the two scribes of the sole surviving manuscript of Bokenham’s Mappula adds a Welsh motto “Etto Gobeth,” to his signature. Higden had been a monk at the Benedictine abbey of St. Werburgh’s, and Horobin notes some evidence that Bokenham’s life of Audrey may have influenced that of Henry Bradshaw in his brief life of that saint interpolated within a longer life of St. Werburgh, written in 1513 (Horobin 2011: 948).

The Discovery of the Abbotsford Manuscript and its Implications

13

Further evidence for a Welsh connection is provided by Bokenham’s apparently first-hand descriptions of Winifred’s well in Holywell (Abbotsford fol. 217v), and the shrine to St. David in Pembrokeshire (fol.70r).

PART THREE THE ANGELIC MARGINS AND THE INCLUSIVENESS OF THE EXEMPLARY: AUTHORITY, COMMUNITY AND IDENTITY

So far, Bokenham has emerged as a figure who can be termed marginal or “angular” on several accounts. Firstly, as Doyle’s work has shown us (Doyle 1989: 118-9) the circulation of his texts was very limited, his audience being restricted to a small, localised circle of like-minded individuals. Secondly, his Yorkist sympathies placed him at odds with the ruling Lancastrian hegemony of the time. Thirdly, the very fact of being a religious author writing in the vernacular in the fifteenth century placed Bokenham in a highly contested, potentially dangerous terrain. This potential danger was exacerbated by the fact that, fourthly, he was writing for a network of devout, predominantly female patrons. Fifthly, in a more general sense, Bokenham betrays a profound awareness of the marginality of England, the English and the English language in literary and religious history. Finally, Bokenham was acutely sensitive to his own literary belatedness and to his consequent canonical marginality. However, I will now suggest that Bokenham ultimately accentuates his own marginality in positive terms. I have already quoted the passage from the Arundel “Prologue” to the life of St. Margaret, where Bokenham expresses his anxiety that his work will be consigned to the “angle of oblyuyoun.” Here “angularity” – minority and marginality – is deployed in an ostensibly self-depreciatory sense. Yet another use of the same expression in the Abbotsford MS would seem to suggest that Bokenham does not always necessarily consider angularity in such a negative light. In the penultimate stanza of the Abbotsford version of the life of St. Agnes, Bokenham writes: Grammercy seynt Ambrose holy doctour Which to seynt Anneys such haddist affeccion That thou woldist taken that blissid labour Hir life to written for virgynes instruction

Part Three

16

Which thou fonde in an angle of obliuion Prively hidde and haddist pytee That it by negligence shuld loste hane be (Abbotsford MS fol. 46v).1

The life of St. Agnes, too, risked consignment to the “angle of obliuion” and was recovered therefrom by no less an authority than St. Ambrose. It is interesting to consider the limited circulation of Bokenham’s own works from this perspective. As Doyle’s work has shown us, Bokenham’s network of contacts outside his order could have permitted him to seek a broader circulation for his works, yet Bokenham would appear to have chosen not to take advantage of any such opportunities (Doyle 1989: 119; Horobin 2008: 154-5). In other words, Bokenham’s canonical marginality seems almost to reflect a deliberate choice on his part. To quote Doyle: The possibilities of escaping from the limits of a single patronal, local or regional publication by way of the national and international facilities of a religious order were not >…@ taken advantage of (Doyle 1989: 119).

Bokenham would have encountered a powerful assertion of the spiritual authority of the geopolitical margins in Higden’s Polychronicon, his source for the Mappula Angliae. As Lavezzo (2006) demonstrates, otherness and marginality frequently formed the grounds for exceptionalism and exaltation in writings on England. After quoting Isidore, Higden cites a popular Anglo Saxon myth referring to Pope Gregory the Great’s admiration for some pagan English slave boys. The relevant passage in the Mappula is missing, presumably, only as a result of damage to the manuscript. I will here give Trevisa’s English translation after Higden’s Latin: Vel secundum Bedam, libro primo, beatus Gregorius videns Anglorum pueros Romae venales, alludens patriae vocabulo ait: Vere Angli, quia vultu nitent ut angeli (Babington and Lumby 1865-8: II 4-6) [Other elles, after Bede in his firste booke, blessede Gregory seenge childer of Englonde to be sette furthe to be solde at Rome seide: Now truly thei may be callede Englische men (Angells or Angellysmen) […] SoÞeliche aungelis, for her face schyneÞ as aungelis; for Þe nobilite of Þe lond schone in Þe children face] (ibid.: II, 5-6).

To quote Lavezzo, While the pun does authorize the translation of the strange English into the Christian family, it also imagines the English as an elect and blessed people, whose geographic detachment is of a piece with their religious

The Angelic Margins and the Inclusiveness of the Exemplary

17

elevation above the ordinary members of the universal religious siblinghood. Setting the slave boys and their people apart from ordinary Christians – including, indeed, even Pope Gregory the Great himself – the legend extols the English as angels on the edge of the world (Lavezzo 2006: 11).

More generally, Bokenham’s chosen genre, hagiography, frequently extols the spiritual superiority of early Christians who are persecuted by the political powers that be and located at the margins of society. Bokenham may well have expected his readers to perceive certain parallels between these “angular” yet sacred minorities and his own professedly “minor” contributions to the canon. Hilles notes that Bokenham’s lives of Margaret and Christina, for example, both present the saint “through images of goodness generated in filth or corruption” (Hilles 2001: 203). Margaret is compared to a rose among thorns: But ryht as of a ful sharp thorn, Growyth a rose bothe fayr & good, So sprong Margrete of the hethene blood (Serʁeantson 1938: 348-50; Abbotsford 130r).

Christina is also compared to a flower growing among thorns, as well as to gold, silver and corn coming out of the earth: But lych as oftyn off a full scharp thorn Flouris spryngyn fayre and delicious, And off foull erthe grouyth good korn, Gold ekk and siluyre ant stonys precious So off these hethene folk and vycious, Wych in ydolatrie here lyfe dyde fine, A mayde both fayre and eke gracious Was born, whos name thei clepyd Cristyne (Serʁeantson 1938: 2115-22; Abbotsford 141r).

In the Arundel text’s aristotelian prologue to the life of St. Margaret, Bokenham interestingly uses a similar set of metaphors with reference to his own poem, drawing a clear parallel between saint and text by likening the text to a “margerye perle”2 (Hilles 2001: 203): And yet me thinkyth it were ete That my werk were hatyd for me; For this, I suppose, alle men weel knowe: No man the rose awey doth throwe Althow it growe vp-on a thorn; Who is so nyce that wil good corn

18

Part Three Awey caste for it growyth in chaf? Men also drynkyn ale and lef the draf, Albe-it that ale thorgh draf dede ren. Gold eek, as knowe weel alle wyse men, In foul blak erthe hath hys growing, And yet is gold as precious thing, Streyhtly be-schet in many a cophyr. A mergery perle, aftyr the phylosophyr, Growyth on a shelle of lytl pryhs, Yet is it precious (Serʁeantson 1938: 41-56).

In the present study, I will seek to define how Bokenham locates his own auctoritas – his own identity as auctor – within various communities which, at the same time as being marginal, are at once elite and, paradoxically, inclusive. I will focus on three areas of central importance to Bokenham’s oeuvre – language, lineage and location. In the chapter on language I will first consider Bokenham’s translations of Voragine’s etymological prologues and his treatment of etymology in general. I will argue that Bokenham uses etymology to authenticate and authorise his own poetic language. As I will suggest in more detail below, in Chapter Two, etymology, in Bokenham and in Voragine, bespeaks a naturalist linguistics grounded in an authority of origins – a sense that human language, if employed with due caution and historical knowledge, can still capture something of the pristine nature of the original language of Adam of even of the originary authority of the creating Logos. I will then proceed to examine Bokenham’s treatment of the vernacular or “modre tonge” in the Mappula Angliae and elsewhere, suggesting that Bokenham claims a similarly pristine, originary status for his own professedly plain and unembellished vernacular, which he opposes to the “artificial,” Latinate embellishments of his courtly predecessors. Bokenham, then, authenticates his own poetic voice diachronically. A similar process of diachronic authentication can be traced in Bokenham’s treatment of lineage, my theme in Chapter Three of this book. Bokenham uses the genealogy motif to locate his saintly subʁects, his Yorkist patrons and himself as author within a spiritually elite and, crucially, feminine line, which he implicitly opposes to a worldly patriarchy implicitly associated with Lancastrianism and courtly poetics. In my fourth chapter, I will pass from the diachronic to the synchronic, considering Bokenham’s treatment of geographical and textual space. Textual and geographical locations are closely inter-related for Bokenham and have two principle functions. Firstly, saints’ legends lend a transhistorical significance and authority to their geographical settings and local communities, ʁust as relics sacralise and authorise the locations in

The Angelic Margins and the Inclusiveness of the Exemplary

19

which they are stored.3 This authorising, sacralising function is particularly pertinent in the lives of native saints, where Bokenham is seeking to authenticate his own vernacular voice and interpolate “angular” British traditions into the authoritative framework of the Legenda Aurea. Secondly, both the sacralisation of physical spaces involved in the hagiographical genre and the meticulous attention which Bokenham pays to textual form and structure combine to suggest a fundamental connection between the created world and human poetics. To imbue geography with spiritual meaning is to evoke the notion of the “Book of Nature” – of creation as codex – which, in turn, legitimises human creativity by aligning it to the divine. Finally, this synchronic vision serves to counteract various diachronically-oriented forms of authority, elevating experience in the world of the here and now over certain historically grounded forms of textual auctoritas. First of all, though, it is worth briefly justifying my use of such a loaded term as auctoritas in reference to such a self-professedly minor author as Bokenham. In his otherwise superb analysis of Bokenham’s Aristotelian “Prologue” to the Arundel life of St. Margaret, Johnson seems rather over-eager to dismiss Bokenham’s repeated use of the word “auctor”: The term “auctour” is being used here in the most general sense. Bokenham is not claiming the authority of an evangelist or a Boethius (Johnson 1994: 107).

If Bokenham did not mean to use the loaded term “auctor” here, why did he do so – and not just once, but five times?: The efficyent cause is the auctour ... (Serjeantson 1938: 13) That is to seyne, what was the entent Of the auctour fynally, & what he ment (ibid: 23-4) And these thre thyngys longyn to “what”: Auctour, matere, and forme ordinat (ibid: 19-20) Certeyn the auctour was an austyn frere ... (ibid: 32) Wherefore, if my werk be sure, Lete not disdeyn it disfigure Of the auctour, I lowly beseche (ibid: 67-9).

Notwithstanding all his modest lip service to the literary superiority of the Chaucer-Gower-Lydgate triumvirate, Bokenham refers to these writers as

20

Part Three

“rhetors,” not “auctors.” Moreover, to my knowledge, none of these three writers ever presume to refer to themselves as “auctor,” this denomination always being exclusively reserved for their classical and (very occasionally, e.g. in the case of Dante) vernacular sources. Bokenham, then, is being either extremely audacious or extremely naïf in referring to himself as “auctor.” Bearing in mind the broad knowledge of his textual ancestry and the acute writerly self-consciousness which Bokenham displays throughout his oeuvre, I would be inclined to endorse the latter hypothesis. So what is the nature of the auctoritas to which Bokenham lays claim? I would suggest that, at least in Bokenham’s case, identity and community are key concepts in the definition of auctoritas. Firstly, as I have already mentioned, in the Arundel legends Bokenham explicitly and repeatedly distinguishes himself from a mainstream secular, courtly community of writers, personified by the Chaucer-Gower-Lydgate triumvirate. Secondly, in distinguishing his own writings from those of his forebears, Bokenham tends to stress the plainness of his own vernacular voice. We should not forget that the ornate difficulty of the aureate style was to some extent intended to oppose it to the plain, common vernacularity of lollardy (Hilles 2001:190). To write a vernacular, religious text for the community in the broadest possible sense of the word would surely have been a rather risky undertaking in Bokenham’s day. We need, then, to carefully examine Bokenham’s depiction of his own linguistic community and to re-evaluate traditional readings of Bokenham as a conservative, almost antiintellectual figure in this light (cf. for example Price 2001). Finally, Bokenham belonged to a monastic community which needed to negotiate its relationship with the external community at large at the same time as maintaining its own unique identity and privileges – i.e. to find a fitting balance between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. To begin with the first of these points, in one of the most famous passages in the Divina Commedia, Dante rather audaciously dramatizes his own acceptance into the “bella scola” of classical literature: Così vid’ i’ adunar la bella scola di quel segnor de l’altissimo canto che sovra li altri com’aquila vola. Da ch’ebber ragionato insieme alquanto, volsersi a me con salutevol cenno, e ‘l mio maestro sorrise di tanto; e più d’onore ancora assai mi fenno, ch’e’ sì mi fecer de la loro schiera, sì ch’io fui sesto tra cotanto senno

The Angelic Margins and the Inclusiveness of the Exemplary

21

>Thus I saw assembled the fair school of that lord of highest song who, like an eagle, soars above the rest. After they had talked awhile together, they turned to me with a sign of salutation, at which my master smiled; and far more honor still they showed me, for they made me one of their company, so that I was sixth amid so much wisdom. Thus we went onward to the light, talking of things it is well to pass in silence, even as it was well to speak of them there@ (Singleton 1970: Inferno I.iv.94-102)

In this passage, Dante inserts himself into the poetic community of classical antiquity, implicitly denying that his own medieval works are inferior because in any sense “belated.” At the same time, he asserts his continuity with traditio, placing himself within a traditional lineage of authority, only to assert his own innovatio – his distinctive identity - as a Christian poet.4 In a not dissimilar manner, Bokenham lays claim to his own auctoritas by distinguishing himself from the secular poetic community of his forbears and affiliating himself to the community of saints of whom he writes. Such an identification between saint and author is implicit in many of the hagiographical texts which Bokenham translates. For example, with her dying prayer, Margaret explicitly transfers something of her own intercessional power to the artistic proponents of her cult: More-ouyr, lord, lowly I the beseche For them specially that my passyoun Othyr rede, or wryte, or other do teche, Or cherche or chapel make if they moun, Or lyht or laumpe fynde of deuocyoun To me-ward: lord, for thy gret grace, Hem repentaunce graunte er they hens pace (Serjeantson 1938: 834-40)

A similar privilege is referred to at the end of the life of St. Vincent, where we are told that God will grant special favour to those who erect churches in the saint’s honour: And this priuilege god of his grace Grauntid hath to this martir fre That wherso evir in ony place In his honour ony church made be As though it were the place where he Lieth hym self of his grete mercy His benefettis he shewith plentevously (fol. 47r.).

This prayer is of particular significance to Bokenham’s own monastic fraternity, since a chapel to St. Vincent stood at Clare, which had been

22

Part Three

founded by their patron Joan of Acre, as mentioned in the “Dialogue at the Grave”: Wherefore in honoure, O Vincent! Of the, To whom she had singuler affection, This chapel she made of pure devocion (Scarfe 1962: 65).

Just as praying to the saint will bring the supplicant closer to God, commissioning a vita or a chapel from an artist will bring a patron closer to the saint. If the saint mediates between the supplicant and God, between the temporal and the eternal, the author mediates between the audience or patron and the saint. To quote Salih: The hagiographic narrator typically takes the position of a mediator, both between the saint and the audience and between textual tradition and his own present day (Salih 2006: 11).

In a more general sense, Bokenham’s hagiographical writings implicitly proʁect a spiritual community onto their readers through their stress on the saints’ exemplarity. Saints at once imitate Christ typologically and provide a tropological (moral) model for future Christians. Through his contemporary readers’ imitatio, Bokenham’s vitae become instrumental in sustaining a transhistorical saintly community (cf. Sanok 2007). Of course, such a continuity was inevitably somewhat vexed, and was especially so in the historical climate in which Bokenham was writing. As Sanok writes, with reference to the legend of Saint Cecilia: But how was a medieval woman listening to the legend of St. Cecilia – perhaps at a sermon on her feast day, November 22, or as part of a family’s evening devotions – to take this saint as a model? She was surely not supposed to refuse her husband’s sexual advances: canon law and social custom dictated otherwise. Nor was she supposed to transform her house into a place of public worship and instruct others in the faith: preaching was expressly forbidden to women, and their unregulated religious initiative could lead to charges of heresy. And, of course, she was not encouraged to mock the authority of civic or state officials who insisted that she conform to accepted social or religious practice (ibid.: 2).

This last point brings us to the two remaining issues raised above: how inclusive was the intellectual community in which Bokenham located himself as a vernacular writer and how great a divide did he envisage between the spiritual and secular domains? In other words, by foregrounding the fact that he was writing in a non-elitist vernacular, was Bokenham opening up the spiritually elite community of the saints (the communio

The Angelic Margins and the Inclusiveness of the Exemplary

23

sanctorum) to his lay readership? Was he eroding the barriers between the privileged knowledge of the clergy and the intellectual domain of the pious laity? As Thomas ȳ. Heffernan illustrates, such tensions are as old as hagiography itself. There has always been a degree of tension between the idea of the unique, charismatic and essentially “other” unus sanctus and the more democratic, or at least inclusive vision of a communio sanctorum: one in which a unitas caritatis embraces the saints in heaven, the angels and the believers on earth (Heffernan 1988: 129-32).

Sherry Reames’s work on the lives of Saints Dominic and Augustine in the Legenda Aurea has shown how Voragine ends to adapt his sources in such a way as to broaden the gap between the spiritual and the secular and thus, implicitly, between the church and the laity. This results in what Reames terms a “separation of the saint from the community” – unus sanctus (Reames 1985: 97). When compared to his sources, Voragine minimises the ethical components of the vitae – i.e. their elements of imitability or exemplarity – instead foregrounding the supernatural and miraculous. As Winstead and Horobin observe, Bokenham, instead, endows his saints with virtues befitting the noble, pious, frequently female audience for whom he is writing. For example, Horobin cites the following description of Audrey’s character, which is added to the account given in Bokenham’s source, the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Horobin 2007: 936): Pride in hir myght keeche no place, Flemyd awey by verrey mekenesse. Ire and envie from hir hert did chace Perfite cherite and slouth, gode busynesse. Coueitise repressed Dame largesse, Abstinence drofe awey gredy gloteny, Contynence and chastite flemyd lecchery. In hir demeaning she was amiable, In contenaunce and port sad and demure. In communycacion benygne and affable, In hir array honest, and in hir vesture Noyeng ner hurtyng noon erthely creature. But glad she was evir to helpen eche wight, As fer as hir kunnyng strecchid, and hir myght (Fol. 117v).

24

Part Three

Bokenham also foregrounds the saints’ humanity, presenting them as suffering (and overcoming) natural human dilemmas, not unlike those which his readers might have faced. Thus, in the life of St. Barbara, also quoted by Horobin (Horobin 2007: 936-7), we find the following: And thus in hir conceitis this maide did laboure, Al hir tendir age til she gan to atteyn To tho yeres by growing in which the sooth to seyn, The flesh ageyns the spirite arerith bataile By titulacion of lust, and myghtely dooth assaile The castel of clennesse by many a lyther gynne, And in many for lacke of grace soon doth it wynne. But not forthan in Babara it was nat soo, For titulacion of lust myght in hir nought doo Bicause the grete feruour of Goddis knowing, Which in hir hert was evir restyng, So occupied hir mynde and hir affeccion That therin myght entre no fleshly corrupcion (fol. 6r).

Bokenham can therefore be said to open up the community of the saints to his community of readers – to at least partially bridge the gap between the spiritual and the secular. Exemplarity can, then, from one point of view be seen as a democratising agent. However, as Winstead (Winstead 2011: 70-8) notes, in the earlier legends included in the Arundel MS, Bokenhamian exemplarity promotes a highly conservative set of values, continuing to play down such unorthodox behaviour as female preaching or erudition. In the later Abbotsford lives, instead, Winstead (ibid. 78-84) observes a far greater open-mindedness on Bokenham’s part. As I will discuss in more detail below, as well as continuing to emerge as human, morally exemplary figures, a large number of the female saints presented in the later lives in the Abbotsford manuscript are learned and effective preachers. The Abbotsford manuscript, then, displays a greater optimism and openness regarding the powers of human reason and human language, which is a reflection of a closer affinity between the saintly subjects and those who read and write about them. Both the projection of the spiritual authority of an early Christian saint onto a late medieval vernacular English text and the assertion that there might exist such a community of ethical experience between that saint and a contemporary, medieval English man or woman imply an essential temporal and spatial continuity. This means that Bokenham’s strategies for legitimising his own poetic identity, community and voice in space and time can be seen to reflect his gradual progression towards a confidence in

The Angelic Margins and the Inclusiveness of the Exemplary

25

the orthodoxy and inclusiveness of a feminine vernacular, which may initially appear to be marginal and belated (i.e. “angular”). In light of all this, the interweaving spatial and temporal trajectories represented by the present volume’s three main themes – language, lineage and location – can be seen as playing a central role in Bokenham’s construction and vindication of his own literary auctoritas.

CHAPTER TWO LANGUAGE: ETYMOLOGY, THE VERNACULAR AND THE POETIC VOICE

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

Esmerelda: What is your name? Butch: Butch. Esmerelda: What does it mean? Butch: I’m American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit. (Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction 1994). But above and beyond there's still one name left over, And that is the name that you never will guess; The name that no human research can discover— But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name. (T.S. Eliot, “The Naming of Cats,” The Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats)5

Even today, names surely remain the most immediate means for defining personal identity and for affiliating oneself to or segregating oneself from a community. Tarantino’s Butch deploys his name to locate himself within a national community and to rather aggressively draw a line between his own rootless, post-modern linguistic identity and the Latinate Spanish of his (Catholic?) Mexican interlocutor (“I’m American, honey. Our names don’t mean shit”). In denying any intrinsic meaning to his own name, Butch is (probably unknowingly) engaging in the ancient debate between two conflicting notions of mimesis and grammatology: the “natural language debate,” which centres on whether “names have by nature a truth” (Plato, Cratylus 296a). The first of these notions views language as originating in nature and as functioning mythologically and symbolically. Such a conception can be loosely defined as Platonic / neoPlatonic and is couched in what Derrida terms “the idea of the book.” The

30

Part One

second views the sign-signified relationship as purely conventional and occasionally even tends towards a Derridan vision of language as “écriture.” Butch is a conventionalist, denying any innate correspondence between words and things (“our names don’t mean shit”). For Eliot’s cats, on the other hand, names are all-important. “Profound meditation” on their own names initiates cats into their own unique communities “that no human can reach.” To contemplate this name is to contemplate the “ineffable” (the “effanineffable,” even!). The name as created logos is a mirror in which we can glimpse something of the creating Logos. Bokenham’s critique of the aureate style centres to a large extent on its use of language as superficial ornament. In his deployments of the modesty topos, Bokenham makes repeated recourse to the Ciceronian “flowers of rhetoric” trope. There is nothing unusual per se in this, but I will now briefly suggest that Bokenham’s treatment of this motif tends to imply a criticism of the disparity between linguistic surface and inner meaning which he sees in these texts. In his “Prologue” to the Arundel life of St. Margaret, Bokenham writes: The form of procedyng artificyal Is in no wyse ner poetycal After the scole of the crafty clerk Galfryd of ynglond, in his newe werk, Entytlyd thus, as I can aspye, Galfridus anglicus, in hys newe poetrye, Enbelshyd with colours of rethoryk So plenteuously, that fully it lyk In May was neuere no medewe sene Motleyd with flours on hys verdure grene; For neythyr Tullius, prynce of oure eloquence Ner Demostenes of Grece, more affluence Neuere had in rethoryk, as it semyth me, Than had this Galfryd in hys degree. But for-as-meche as I neuere dede muse In thylk crafty werk, I it now refuse, And wil declaryn euene by and by Of seynt Margrete, aftyr the story, The byrthe, the fostrynge, and how she cam Fyrst to the feyth and sythe to martyrdam, As ny as my wyt it kan deuyse Aftyr the legende (Serjeantson 1938: 83-104)

Bokenham’s overt praise for Geoffrey of Vinsauf here focuses on its superabundance (“plenteuously,” “affluence”) and superficiality (“enbelyshyd,” “motleyd with flours on hys verdure grene”). This

Introduction

31

superfluous and superficial linguistic proliferation is opposed to the poet’s own professed directness and economy, together with his faithfulness to the true spiritual sense of his source text. This emphasis becomes clearer in the Arundel “Prolocutorye in-to Marye Mawdelyns Lyf,” in which the trope is immediately preceded by a direct attack on the superficial rhetoric of “courtly classicizers” (Delany 45) and immediately followed by a reference to his own mortality: .

Not desyryng to haue swych eloquence As sum curyals han, new swych asperence In vttryng of here subtly conceytys, In wych oft tyme ul greth dysceyt it, And specially for þeyr ladyis sake They baladys or amalettys lyst to make, In wych to sorwyn & wepyn þey feyn As þou þe mprongys of deth dede streyn Here hert-root, al-be þei fer þens; Yet not-for-þan is here centens So craftyd up, & with langwage so gay Uttryd, þat I trowe þe moneth of may Neuere fresshere enbelyshyd þe soyl with flours Than is her wrytyng with colours Of rethorycal speche both to & fro; Was neuere þe tayl gayere of a po, Wych þan enherytyd alle Argus eyne Whan Mercuryis whystyl hym dede streyne To hys deed slepe; of wych language The craft to coueyte where grete dotage In myn oold dayis & in þat degree That I am in; wher-fore, lord, to þe Wyt humble entent & hert entere In þis conclude I my long preyere (Serjeantson 1938: 5225-48).

Bokenham attacks courtly lyricists because they “feyn” – because the surface appearance of their linguistic output does not correspond to what is really going on at their “hert-root,” their “centens” is “craftyd up” beyond recognition. Bokenham, instead, speaks clearly, directly from his own “hert” and with unambiguous “entent.” In the context of his argument, the rhetorical “flours” which “enbelyshyd þe soyl” in the works of Bokennham’s predecessors assume rather negative connotations. They obscure and hide what lies beneath, rather than giving it any truthful expression. It is perhaps not over-speculative to read in this reference to the soil some intimation of the mortality of the aging author of the poem (“in myn oold dayis”), who has chosen to give humble voice to eternal truths rather than

32

Part One

cover over the dust to which he will soon return with ephemeral rhetorical flowers. Some support for this reading is to be found in Bokenham’s other deployment of the trope, in the “Prologue” to the Life of St. Agnes which appears in the Arundel and the Abbotsford manuscripts. Here, Bokenham ostensibly laments his own belatedness, telling us how, when he presented himself at the Ciceronian garden of rhetoric, he was rebuffed by a rather haughty Pallas who told him that Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate had already gathered “the most fresh flourys.” Intriguingly, Pallas immediately follows up this praise by telling Bokenham that Chaucer and Gower are dead and buried and referring to Lydgate’s mortality: “Thou commyst to late, for gadyrd up be The most fresh flourys by personys thre Of wych tweyne han fynysshyud here fate, but þe trydde hath datropos yet in cherte, As gower, chauncer & ioon lytgate” (Serjeantson 1938: 4054-8; Abbotsford fol. 43r)

This stress on the mortality of Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate emerges again during the vita of St. Margaret, in which Bokenham again couples praise for the courtly triumvirate with a reference to their mortality. The passage in the Arundel manuscript is as follows: But sekyr I lakke bothe eloquens And kunnyng swych maters to dilate, For I dwelyd neuere wyth the fresh rethoryens, Gower, Chauncers, ner wyth lytgate, Wych lyuyth yet, lest he deyed late, Wherfore I preye eche an hertly Haue me excusyd thow I do rudly (Serjeantson 1938: 414-20).

In the Abbotsford MS the stanza is updated to mention Lydgate’s death: But siker I lacke bothe eloquence And kunnyng such matiers to dilate Ffor I nevir duellid with the fresh rethorience Gower Chauncers ner with Lydgate Which al be runnen to her fate Wherfore I prey eche man hertely Haue me excused though I speke rudely (fol. 130v).

Some explanation for this repeated linking of superficial courtly rhetoric with the death of the poet can perhaps be found in the famous Pauline

Introduction

33

edict: “littera enim occidit, spiritus autem vivicat” (“the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life” Corinthians 2:3). If words are divorced from their spiritual sense, they belong to the mutable world of decay and death, and herein lies Bokenham’s implicit criticism of aureate poetics. Yet unlike Paul, Bokenham would not cast off the letter altogether. He rather seeks to reunite letter and spirit in an authentically Christian poetics. From this point of view, I would agree with Delany that Augustine’s theory of Christian rhetoric, as set forth in his De Doctrina Christiana, can shed a great deal of light on the Augustinian Bokenham’s own approach to writing (Delany 1998: 49-64). At first sight, Augustine would seem to offer little material for any kind of poetical apologia. He repeatedly emphasises that linguistic signs, in the parlance of his contemporary world, are “human institutions” – i.e. conventional, not natural: Sicut enim, verbi gratia, una figura litterae X quae decussatim notatur, aliud apud Graecos, aliud apud Latinos valet, non natura, sed placito et consensione significandi; et ideo qui utramque linguam novit, si homini Graeco velit aliquid significare scribendo, non in ea significatione ponit hanc litteram, in qua eam ponit cum homini scribit Latino: et Beta uno eodemque sono, apud Graecos litterae, apud Latinos oleris nomen est; et cum dico, Lege, in his duabus syllabis, aliud Graecus, aliud Latinus intelligit: sicut ergo hae omnes significationes pro suae cujusque societatis consensione animos movent […] Namque omnia quae ideo valent inter homines, quia placuit inter eos ut valeant, instituta hominum sunt (Augustine 1886 (a): II.xxiv.37). [So (by way of example) the single letter which is written like a cross means one thing to Greeks and another to Latin speakers, and has meaning not by nature but by agreement and convention; therefore a person who knows both languages does not, if he wants to say something in writing to a Greek, write that letter with the same meaning as it has when he writes to a Latin speaker. And the word beta, consisting of the same sounds in both languages, is the name of a letter in Greek, but a vegetable in Latin. When I say lege a Greek understands one thing by these two syllables, but a Latin speaker something else. All these meanings, then, derive their effects on the mind from each individual’s agreement with a particular convention. […] All things which are meaningful to humans just because humans have decided that they should be so are human institutions.](Green 1997: 52-3).

Moreover, he dismisses the aesthetic pleasure to be gained from works of art in general, including the fables of the poets: In picturis vero et statuis, caeterisque hujusmodi simulatis operibus, maxime peritorum artificum, nemo errat cum similia viderit, ut agnoscat quibus sint rebus similia. Et hoc totum genus inter superflua hominum

Part One

34

instituta numerandum est, nisi cum interest quid eorum, qua de causa, et ubi, et quando, et cujus auctoritate fiat. Millia denique fictarum fabularum et falsitatum, quarum mendaciis homines delectantur, humana instituta sunt. Et nulla magis hominum propria, quae a seipsis habent, existimanda sunt, quam quaeque falsa atque mendacia (Augustine 1955, II.xxv.39). [In the case of pictures and statues and other such representations, especially those made by experienced artists, nobody who sees the representations fails to recognise the things which they resemble. This whole category should be classed among superfluous human institutions, except when it makes a difference why or where or when or by whose authority one of them is made. Finally, the thousands of fictional stories and romances, which through their falsehoods give people are human institutions. Indeed, nothing should be thought more peculiar to mankind than lies and falsehoods, which derive exclusively from mankind] (Green 1997, 53-4).

However, Augustine’s repeated statements of conventionalism are constantly undercut by a cautious naturalism and a strong sense of the central importance of language to God’s creation as a whole. As Bloch stresses, for all of Augustine’s linguistic caution, his writings on language are ultimately underpinned by a sense of a fundamental ontological connection between words and the Word, strongly rooted in his doctrine of the Trinity – a doctrine which establishes a crucial connection between two of the key themes of the present study: namely, language and lineage: The drama of return to the Father through the Son is crucial for Augustine’s theology of history, which is indissociable from a theology of sacramental signs. Augustine thus distinguishes between the undifferentiated, immaterial, divine Word which, “engendered by the Father, is coeternal with Him,” and corporeally articulated human speech. In some extended sense, however, words always refer to the Word. All language thus harks back to an origin synonymous with the Father who remains present in the objects of his Creation (Bloch 1983:60)

It is for this reason that, in his De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine seeks to redeem and Christianise classical rhetoric, rather than dismissing it altogether: Porro qui non solum sapienter, verum etiam eloquenter vult dicere, quoniam profecto plus proderit, si utrumque potuerit; ad legendos vel audiendos et exercitatione imitandos eloquentes eum mitto libentius, quam magistris artis rhetoricae vacare praecipio (Augustine 1886 (a): IV.v) I 

Introduction

35

As for the person who wants to speak eloquently as well as wisely – it will certainly be more beneficial if he can do both – I would be happier to refer him to eloquent speakers so that he can read their works, listen to their words, and practice imitating them, than to recommend that his time be spent on teachers of rhetoric (Green 1997: 105)

Augustine, then, ultimately treads an interesting middle way between conventionalist and naturalist approaches towards language theory, on the one hand espousing extreme caution in the use of linguistic signs, since they are human institutions whilst, on the other, constantly seeking out relations between human words and the divine Word. Augustinian linguistics, then, decrees from one point of view that language should be as simple and transparent as possible, the stress lying not on what but on how something signifies. Language should in this sense be used (“uti”) not enjoyed (“frui”) – hence Bokenham’s plain style. However, at the same time, Augustine’s cautious naturalism allows for a certain validation of linguistic art as a consequence of the fundamentally linguistic and thus artistic and rhetorical nature of all God’s creation (“the book of nature”), which can be reflected, albeit “through a mirror, darkly” in the literary output of his servants.

PART TWO ETYMOLOGY, THE TRINITY AND THE LEGENDA AUREA

I will now suggest that the etymology motif represents one of Bokenham’s key strategies for authenticating and authorising his own poetic voice – for counter-distinguishing his own linguistic identity from that of his poetic forbears and locating it in an alternative, elite community. As Bloch (1983) and others6 have demonstrated, medieval etymologies sought to trace a connection between words-as-signifiers and their true significance (note the origins of the word “etymology” in the Greek etumos, meaning true or real).7 Bloch argues that the medieval fascination with etymology reflects the naturalist theory of language which I discussed in the introduction to this section (Bloch 1983: 55-63). He suggests that by tracing words back to their origins we can, to a limited extent, reverse human history, coming closer to recovering their prelapsarian origin in the divine Word. Having said this, we should not forget that not all etymologies share the diachronic trajectory implied in Bloch’s reading. The fanciful and usually spurious etymologies which Bokenham translates from Voragine and Higden fall into two broad categories: the historical and semantic. Johannes Bronkhorst (2001) provides the following useful summary of this distinction: A historical etymology presents the origin or early history of a word; it tells us, for example, that a word in a modern language is derived from another word belonging to an earlier language, or to an earlier stage of the same language. The English word militant, for example, is derived from Latin militans through the intermediary of French militant. Semantic etymologies do something different. They connect one word with one or more others which are believed to elucidate its meaning. The God Rudra, for example, has that name according to the Vedic text Satapatha BrƗhmana (6.1.3.10), because he cried (rud-) in one story that is told about him. Semantic etymologies tell us nothing about the history of a word, but something about its meaning (147-8).

38

Part Two

Whereas historical etymologies seek to recover the natural quality of language by tracing the origins of words, semantic ones reveal the persistent affinity of words to the persistent and originary language of Adam. Having drawn this distinction, however, it is worth pointing out that it is far more applicable to Bokenham’s Latin source texts than to his own vernacular translations. Although in the fifteenth century Latin was not a language of the historical past in the same way as it is for us today or in the same way as Greek or biblical Hebrew would have been at Bokenham’s time, it nonetheless was a language with a longer history – a language with a greater claim to an originary authority. Hence, for example, whereas Voragine’s exposition of the Latin etymology of the Latin name Margarita might be termed semantic, Bokenham’s translation of the Latin etymology for the modern English name Margaret has already assumed a historical quality. Bokenham translates eighteen of Voragine’s etymological prologues.8 While this means that he only translated the prologues for about fifteen percent of the total number of legends translated from Voragine, we should not forget that the near-contemporary and local translator of the Gilte Legende did not translate a single one of the etymological passages (Horobin 2008: 146-7). Lydgate does translate the Legenda Aurea etymologies for his lives of Saints Margaret and George, the latter of which prologues is not translated in the Abbotsford MS, and Chaucer translates the etymology for St. Cecilia in his “Second Nun’s Tale.” Like Bokenham, Capgrave translates the Legenda Aurea prologue to the life of St. Augustine, even though he does not use Voragine as his source for the main body of the vita. Interestingly, Bokenham also begins one of his legends of native saints, the Life of St. Felix of Dunwich, with a Legenda-style etymology: The first man that taught cristis feith to the peple of EstInglonde was oon clepid felix the which was born in the boundys of Burgundye. And wurthyly was this man clepid felix which is asmoche to seyn in englissh as happy or gracious for he was gracious and fortunat bothen in the sight of god and of man and al the werkys which he wrought were graciously begunnen and graciously brought to an ende (fol. 72r.).

Similarly, an etymological explanation for St. Clare’s name features in the opening passage of her life. As Clare’s mother prays for succour during childbirth, she hears an angelic annunciation which influences her choice of the baby’s name: She herd a voys from heuene seyinge to here on this wyse. Woman dred not nor be not aferd for thou shalt brynge forth a cler lyth the wyche shal

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea

39

clerly illumynyd and makyn brygh the word. For whiche cause whan hyre childe was born and brought to the baptern she mad yt to clepyn Clara (fol. 161r).

If we look at the lives for which Bokenham chose to translate the etymological prologues, it becomes apparent that he frequently did so for those lives in which he may be assumed to have had a particular interest. Of the eleven lives of the apostles present in the Abbotsford Legenda Aurea, seven (namely, Thomas, Luke, Peter, Paul, ȳohn, Matthew and ȳames the Less) have their etymological prologues. Moreover, while the etymologies for Bartholomew, Simon and Matthias are definitely absent, the beginning of the life of St. Andrew is missing, as is the entire life of ȳames the Greater, so we can not rule out the possibility that the passages in question might have been translated. Lengthy etymological passages also precede the lives of the church fathers, Ambrose, Augustine and ȳerome. As the founder of his own order, Augustine was obviously a particularly important figure for Bokenham, as was Ambrose, whose pivotal influence on Augustine is detailed in the Confessions. The founder of another monastic order, Francis, is also introduced with an etymological passage. The etymology at the beginning of the life of St. Benedict is omitted, as is that at the beginning of the life of St. Gregory. The opening page of the life of St. Dominic is, again, absent, so we cannot know whether the etymology was included. The already-mentioned inclusion of etymological passages in the lives of St. Clare and St. Felix of Dunwich may be seen to reflect the more local importance of these two figures for Bokenham. Felix was the first bishop of East Anglia and was praised by Bede for bringing Christianity to that kingdom. St. Clare shares her name with the town of Clare and with Clare Priory, where Bokenham spent most of his life. The etymological prologues are also included in a comparatively high proportion of the lives of female saints which Bokenham translates from Voragine: namely, Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Margaret, Mary Magdalen, Anne, Katherine, Cecilia and Elizabeth. On the basis of the observations ʁust presented, these inclusions would appear to further evince the central importance of the feminine to Bokenham’s oeuvre. Moreover, two of the etymologies which Bokenham chooses to translate are of particular interest on account of their deployment of writing imagery and their implicit identification of the saintly body with the hagiographical text – of textual corpus with sacred corpse. The life of St. Felix begins by referring to an apparently apocryphal theory that the name Felix “in pincis” refers to the fact that its bearer, a severe school

40

Part Two

master, met his martyr’s death at the hand of irate former pupils who stabbed him to death with their styluses: Whilome were two brethren in Rome both having this name ffelix of which the elder brother is clepid felix in pincis or for the place which he was buryed in or for the instrument wherewith aftir some mennys opinion he was martyred. Thei that thus opynen seyen that this ffelix was a scole maister of children with which he was right sharp and vigorous. Wherfore whan paynyms had taen hym and he wolde nat forsaken criste thei deliverid hym to his scolers to be punnysshed and they wyth poyntels and alles pricked hym to the deth and therefore as they seyen he is clepid ffelix i pincis for pincta is an alle (fol. 38v).

This short legend concludes with an anecdote which stresses the performative power of the written word, in which Felix converts a group of pagans by challenging their God Apollo to tell him what is written on the folded parchment in his hand (the Pater Noster): Upon a tyme whan paynyms sacrifised to her god Appollo ffelix came and seid thus: Sires yf your Appollo be verily god late hym seyen what thing I holde shett in myn hande. And in his hand he had a scrowe wherein was written the pater noster. But Appollo coude nat tellen what it was and therefore the paynyms weren anoon convertid (ibid.).

Bokenham’s translation of the prologue to the life of St. Thomas is much freer and is so structured as to afford a central position to Thomas’s penetration of Christ’s wounds with his fingers – a gesture to which Bokenham dedicates a fairly lengthy interpolation. The opening section of the etymology in Voragine is as follows: Thomas interpretatur abyssus vel geminus, quod et Graece Didimus dicitur; vel Thomas a thomos, quod est divisio sive sectio. Dicitur ergo abyssus eo, quod profunditatemdivinitatis pnetrare meruit, quando ad sui interrogationem Christus sibi respondit: ego sum via veritas et ita. Dicitur geminus eo, quod resurrectionem Christi quasi geiate et in duplum quam alii cognovit. Nam illi cognoverunt videndo, iste videndo et palpando. Divisio siue sectio diitur, quia mentem suam ab amore mundi divisit vel quia ab aliis in fide resurrectionis divisus et sectus fuit. Vel dicitur Thomas quasi totus means in Dei scilicet amore et contemplatione (Graesse 1890: 32-3)). [The name Thomas means abyss; or it means twofold, the Greek word for which is didimus; or it comes from thomos, which means a dividing or separating. Thomas is called abyss because he was granted insight into the depths of God’s being when Christ, in answer to his question, said: “I am

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea the way and the truth and the life.” He is called twofold because he came to know the Lord’s resurrection in two ways – not only by sight, like the others, but by seeing and touching. He is called dividing or separating because he separated his heart from the love of the world; or because he set himself apart from the other disciples by not at first believing that Christ had risen. Or again, Thomas comes from totus means, a total wanderer, one who is wholly outside himself in the love and contemplation of God] (Granger Ryan 1993: I 29-30).

In Bokenham, instead, we find the following: Thommas cristis disciple aftir the sentence of Iannence and othir doctours is asmoche to seyn by interpretacion of his name as botomelees depthe, hool passyng, divyded, douteful and doublid. And al thise propertees mow be shewid by the gospel convenyently to pertene to hym. As for the first that is botomeles depthe we redyn in the gospel that he mevid to criste a question seyeng to hym on this wise: Lorde we wete not whider thou goost wherfore teche us how we mow knowen the wey. And criste anoon openyng the profounde botomelees depthe of the divinite answerd and seid I am the wey I am truthe and I am lyfe. No man cometh to my fadir but by me yf ye had knowe my fadir ye shuld hane knowen me and aftir this ye shul knowen hym for siker ye han seen hym John 10. Al hool passyng was thomas into the fervent loue and affeccion of his maister criste Ihnj whan not oonly he offrid hyself to goon and deyen with hym whan he herd that the iewys had maliciously conspired his deeth but also he exorted his brethern othir disciples forto doon the same. As witnesseth the gospel John 11. Divided was thomas from the remnant of thapostles the day of cristis resurrection at eve whan criste apperid unto hem in the place where thei were gadrid togider and the gatis were shett for drede of the iewys wherfore he sawe not criste liche as diden othir disciples John 20. Douteful he was whan he came in and they seiden that thei had seen criste he wolde nat bileven it and seid on this wise. But yf I putte my hande in his side and see the woundis which the nayles made i hys handis and in his feet I shal not bileven that he is rysen. But this absence of thomas at cristis apperyng and his douteful aunswere at his ageyn comyng was not of casuelte but it was by the eternal prouidence of goddis mercyful benygnite whych by his hard bileve and doute wolde deliveren us from almaner diffidence of his resurrecion and mysbileve and doute. And this is the sentence of seynt Gregorie upon this gospel […] where he seith thus the gracious godenesse of god wrought by a marveilous maner that his chosen and welebiloued disciple shulde desire to putten away al oure doute. Marie Magdaleyn which sone bilevid did not so moche for us as did thomas which longe doutid for thomas doutyng touchid cristis woundis bodily and in that he curid the woundis of mysbileve in our soulis gostely and therfore the eight day aftir his resurreccion criste apperyng to his disciples as he did the first day seid to thomas on this. Shew in this fynger

41

42

Part Two hider and putt thyn hande in to my side and wil thou not be of fals and mysbileve but be thou feithful and true. Att which worde of criste anoon Thomas was doublid that is to seyn double wise in the feith stablisshid and confermed both in feelyng and in seeyng and therfore he seid thus. Theus meus dios meus my lorde and my god as who seith thou my god whom I see not art my lorde that boughtist me with that precious blode which ran oute of the woundis which I see and fele. This is my feith and my bileve. (fol. 14r).

Bokenham here cites Gregory the Great to contrast the noli me tangere episode with Mary Magdalen to Thomas’ physical probing of Christ’s wounds. This contrast is interesting when considered from the point of view of the gendered theories of reading and writing, whereby the masculine reader penetrates the feminine text to draw forth its spiritual meaning, or the pen as phallus propagates new meaning, which scholars such as Dinshaw have traced in medieval and patristic texts. Thomas, as masculine reader, penetrates the feminised Word made flesh, while the feminine Mary Magdalen must passively content herself with the superficial appearance of Christ. Thomas’ finger is immersed in ȳesus’ blood like a stylus in ink, and this metaphorical penetration of the fertile Word engenders new believers, as Thomas goes on to write and preach the Gospel. As Thomas is “doublid” he also, in a certain sense, becomes a double (albeit, naturally, an inferior copy) of Christ. At the end of his life of St. Thomas, Voragine cites Isidore with reference to Thomas’ physical similarity to Christ: Isidorus in libro de via et obitu sanctorum sic de isto apostolo dicit: Thomas discipulus Christi ac similes salvatori, audiendo incredulous, videndo fidelis fuit. Hic evangelium praedicavit Parthis, Medis, Persis, Hircanis et Bactrianis, et intrans orientalem plagam et interna gentium penetrans ibi praedicationem suam usque ad titulum suae passionis perduxit. Hic lanceis transfixus occubuit (Graesse 1890: 39). [In his book On the Life and Death of the Saints Isidore says of Saint Thomas: “Thomas, a disciple of Christ who bore a resemblance to the Saviour, not believing what he heard, believed when he saw the Lord. He preached the Gospel to the Parthians, the Medes, the Persians, the Hircinians, and the Bactrians. Setting foot on the shores of the Orient and penetrating into the interior, he preached to the peoples there until the day of his martyrdom. He died from the thrust of a lance (Granger Ryan: I 35).

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea

43

As Clark notes, in this passage we can perhaps trace a vestige of a Syriac cult, “a possible Christianization of the Indo-European myth of the dioscuri “Divine Twins,” which held that Thomas was the twin brother of Jesus” (Clark 1976: 166). As the final leaf of Bokenham’s translation is missing, we can not know if or how he rendered this passage. Finally, in his etymological prologue to the life of St ȳohn the Evangelist, Bokenham makes a slight alteration to Voragine’s exposition of the fourth interpretation of the saint’s name. In Voragine, the passage is as follows: Quartum est matris Dei recommendation et inde dictum est, cui donation facta est. Maxima enim donatio a domino tunc eidem facta est, quando mater Dei in ejus custodia donata est (Graesse1890: 56). [And the particular grace of favour implied in the fourth meaning was the entrusting to ȳohn of the mother of God. For this he was called the one to whom God has given a gift; indeed the greatest possible gift was given by the Lord to ȳohn when the mother of God was entrusted to his care] (Granger Ryan : I 50)

Bokenham adds a brief citation from Isidore here, which serves to further stress ȳohn’s virginity and assert his fraternity with Christ: The fourthe priuilege of seynt Iohn is the special comendation to hym of cristes owen modir the tyme of hys passion. To this accordith the fourth interpretation of ȳohn. Where might ben a gretter yifte than cristes owen modir by which yifte as seith Isidre ȳohn opteynyd two grete dignities and worships ffor hereby quoth he he was our ladies sone by adopcion and cristis brother in virginyte (fol. 19r.).

That ȳohn’s virginity elevates him to a state of brotherhood with Christ obviously has important implications for Bokenham’s own monastic fraternity. As far as Bokenham’s translation strategy for these passages is concerned, it is first of all worth noting that these are among the most frequent sites of first person authorial interpolation. Thus, for example, the prologue to the life of St. Thomas the Apostle begins in an impersonal voice, referring to its contents as being “aftir the sentence of Ianuence and other doctoures:” Thomas cristis disciple aftir the sentence of Ianuence and other doctoures is asmoche to seyn by interpretacioun of his name as botomelees depthe, hool passing, diuydid, doutefull and doubled […] And thus brefly haue I

44

Part Two shewid by the gospel how that Thomas is conueniently clepid (fol. 13r14v).

In the prologue to the life of St. Agnes, the etymology is preceded by a first person narrative of the poet’s encounter with Pallas, described above. Again, Bokenham begins the etymology by citing Voragine: Agnes of agna, who-so wyl it seke, Dyryuyid was, seyth Ianuence […] (Serʁeantson: 4067-8)

He concludes his analysis of the name in the first person, ending the prologue with a first-person prayer to Agnes to inspire him as he writes: […] and of þese thre In hir lyf we fynde goo congruyte, Wych at þis tyme I ne wyl expresse Oonly to eschewyn prolyxte, Wych oftyn of heryng causyth werynesse. O holy lamb of god o blyssyd agnete, Wych enflawmyd in þi tendyr age Of þe loue of god wyth þe feruent hete So sore were þat no fers rage Of peyn myht chaungen þi corage, Nere þin hert from hym no wyse incline, Me wyt purchace, lady, & language Thy lyf begunne wyth to termyne (4085-98)

Perhaps most interesting from this point of view is the conclusion to the prologue to the life of St. Thomas. I have already discussed above how Thomas the apostle not only attained a double insight but also, in a certain sense, became a double of Christ when he penetrated his wounds with his finger and how this writerly-readerly gesture can be said to validate the authority of the apostolic text. Bokenham concludes the prologue by citing Thomas’ first person declaration of faith, the creed, before closing in his own first person voice. The passage in question follows on immediately from the description of Thomas touching Christ’s wounds, described above: Att which worde of criste anoon Thomas was doublid that is to seyn double wise in the feith stablisshid and confermed both in feelyng and in seeyng and therfore he seid thus. Theus meus dios meus my lorde and my god as who seith thou my god whom I see not art my lorde that boughtist me with that precious blode which ran oute of the woundis which I see and fele. This is my feith and my bileve. And thus brefly haue I shewid by the gospel how that thomas is conueniently clepid. Abbysus, totus means,

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea

45

thomos, didimus and Gemimus and this seid suffiseth for the prologe and the interpretacion of his name (fol. 14r).

The “I”-voices of Thomas and Bokenham here in some way converge, Thomas’ apostolic auctoritas being appropriated by and replicated in Bokenham’s text. If Thomas becomes a double or twin of Christ, Bokenham in some sense hereby presents himself as “doubling” Thomas’ apostolic authority. Perhaps the most significant feature of Bokenham’s translations, however, is his repeated accentuation of the numerological symbolism present in Voragine. Delany stresses the importance of numerology for Bokenham (Delany 1998: 168-9) and, although her arguments for the presence of an overall numerological structure for Arundel 327 are no longer tenable, I nonetheless believe her conviction regarding the centrality of number in Bokenham’s works to be well-founded. As Delany writes, […] numbers both presented and constituted various universal harmonies and proportional structures […]. Numerology is thus fundamental to the thought of many classical and medieval thinkers – not least among them Augustine, who wrote throughout his life about the properties of numbers (ibid.: 168).

While, for Augustine, words are “human institutions” to be handled with extreme care, numbers constitute pre-existent “divine institutions” discovered by human beings in creation: Jam vero numeri disciplina cuilibet tardissimo clarum est quod non sit ab hominibus instituta, sed potius indagata atque inventa. Non enim sicut primam syllabam Italiae, quam brevem pronuntiaverunt veteres, voluit Virgilius, et longa facta est; ita quisquam potest efficere cum voluerit, ut ter terna aut non sint novem, aut non possint efficere quadratam figuram, aut non ad ternarium numerum tripla sint, ad senarium sescupla, ad nullum dupla, quia intelligibiles numeri semissem non habent. Sive ergo in seipsis considerentur, sive ad figurarum aut ad sonorum aliarumve motionum leges numeri adhibeantur, incommutabiles regulas habent, neque ullo modo ab hominibus institutas, sed ingeniosorum sagacitate compertas (PL 34: II 38). [As for the study of number, it is surely clear even to the dullest person that it was not instituted by men, but rather investigated and discovered, Virgil wanted the first vowel of Italia – traditionally pronounced short – to be long, and made it long, but nobody can bring it about by willing it that three threes are not nine, or that they fail to make a squared number, or that the number nine is not thrice three, or one and a half times six, or

46

Part Two twice no number (for odd numbers are not divisible by two). So whether numbers are considered purely as numbers or used in accordance with the laws that govern figures or sounds or other kinds of motion, they have fixed rules, which were not in any way instituted by human beings but discovered by the intelligence of human brains] (Green 1997: 62-3).

At the beginning of Book IV of The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine argues that God created the world in six days because six is a perfect number, inasmuch as it is the sum of its parts (six is divisible by one, two and three). He goes on to analyse Wisdom 11:20 – “You have arranged all things in measure and number and weight” – stressing the divine origins of these three principles: Neque enim Deus mensura est, aut numerus, aut pondus, aut ista omnia. An secundum id quod novimus mensuram in eis quae metimur, et numerum in eis quae numeramus, et pondus in eis quae appendimus, non est Deus ista: secundum id vero quod mensura omni rei modum praefigit, et numerus omni rei speciem praebet, et pondus omnem rem ad quietem ac stabilitatem trahit, ille primitus et veraciter et singulariter ista est, qui terminat omnia et format omnia, et ordinat omnia (PL 34: IV 8) [Insofar as measure sets a limit to everything, and number gives everything its specific form, and weight draws everything to rest and stability, he is the original, true and unique measure which defines for all things their bounds, the number which forms all things, the weight which guides all things] (Hill 2002: 244)

He proceeds to argue that, through a right understanding and consideration of number, measure and weight in the created world, we can ascend to the contemplation of their transcendent platonic ideas, eternally present in the mind of God (ibid. IV 8-9). Perhaps not surprisingly, the symbolic number which features most prominently in the prologues and elsewhere is the number three: the number of the Trinity. Throughout the present study I will lay repeated emphasis on the centrality of the Trinity to Bokenham’s oeuvre, since it constitutes the point at which my three concerns – lineage, language and location – converge. Here we find a genealogical link between Father and Son which is inextricable from an etymological link between the creating Logos and the Word made flesh. This is the point at which spatial and temporal location converge in an eternal present (cf. Bloch 1983: 142-44). Bokenham’s reworking of Jacobus’s prologue to the life of St. Margaret perhaps constitutes his most elaborate and interesting treatment of Trinitarian numerology. The etymological passage in Voragine is as follows:

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea

47

Margareta dicitur a quondam pretiosa gemma, quae margarita vocatur: quae gemma est candida, parva et virtuosa. Sic beata Margareta fuit candida per virginitatem, parva per humilitatem, virtuosa per miraculorum operationem, Virtus autem hujus lapidis dicitur esse contra sanguinis effusionem, contra cordis passionem et ad spiritus confortationem. Sic beata Margareta habuit virtutem contra effusionem sui sanguinis per constantiam, quia in suo martirio constantissima exstitit, contra cordis passionem, id est, daemonis tentationem per victoriam, quia ipsa dyabolum superavit, ad spiritus confortationem per doctrinam, quia per suam doctrinam multorum animos confortavit et ad Christi fidem convertit. (Graesse 1890: 400). [The name Margaret is also the name of a precious jewel called margarita, pearl, which is shining white, small, and powerful. So Saint Margaret was shining white by her virginity, small by humility, and powerful in the performance of miracles. The power of the pearl is said to work against effusion of blood and against the passions of the heart, and to effect the strengthening of the spirit. Thus blessed Margaret had power over the effusion of her blood by her constancy, since she was most constant in her martyrdom. She had power over the heart’s passions, i.e., in conquering the demon’s temptations, since she overcame the devil. She strengthened the spirit by her doctrine, since her doctrine strengthened the spirits of many and converted them to the faith of Christ.] (Granger Ryan: I 368).

Bokenham breaks Voragine’s explanation up into two sections, interpolating lengthy exegetical passages of his own after each translation. The first of the two parts, on the shape of the pearl and its aptness for the saint’s life, is followed by a three stanza exposition, with each stanza dedicated to one of the characteristics underlined by Voragine (i.e. virginity, meekness and charity). These three stanzas serve to further underline the aptness of signifier to signified and to emphasise the numerically tripartite and therefore Trinitarian structure of Voragine’s analogy: And conuenyently this uirgyne glorious May to a margaryte comparyd be, Wych is whyght, lytyl, and eek verteuous, As seyn auctours, of thylk propyrte. Whyht was Margrete be virgynyte, Be meknesse lytyl, and most singularly Verteuous be hyr excellent cheryte, In myraclys werkyng shewyd plenteuously. Louyd she nowt well virgynyte And of body and soule to kepe clennesse, Whan Olibrius hyr profryd his wyf to be, And that she shuld be clepyd a pryncesse,

48

Part Two And greth tresore shuld haue & rychesse, Lust, welthe and wurshepe excellently, And for clennesse sake, as I do gesse, Alle hys greth profyrs she set nowt by? Greth meknesse she had for cristys sake Whan the tytyl of hyr natal dygnyte In hyr yung age she dede for-sake And hys handmaydyn she chees to be, Not setting be hyr fadrys enmyte, And wythh hyr noryhs dwellyd wilfully In poure astate and in low degree, Kepyng hyr sheep ful diligently. And if we wyl speken of cheryte I-wys she had ryht greth habundaunce, As in hyr passyoun weel shewyd she; For, as hyr legende makyth remembraunce, She steryd the pepyl euere to repentaunce, And to wynne hem to god was ful besy; And whan she shuld deye, wyth gret constaunce She maad a preyere most cherytabylly (Serjeantson, ed. 1938, 249-80).

Bokenham’s additions to the next section of his translation are also of numerological significance. He again emphasises the number three, analysing the “threefold manere of propyrte” (power over effusion of blood, the heart’s passions and the spirit) detailed by Jacobus in three stanzas (ibid. 281-312). He then goes on to expound on the mystical significance of the number six (the total number of qualities given by Voragine), by associating it with the six wings of the seraphim in Isaiah 6: These sexe vertuhs be fyguryd mystyly In the sexe wengys wych that Isaye Of the cherubyns in hys vysyoun sy Vp-on the hy throne, wyth hys gostly yhe, Stondyng, and to oure purpos now signyfye That this blyssyd mayde Margrete wurthyly Be these sexe vertuhs to heuene dede stye, Ther in ioye to dwellyn perpetually (ibid. 321-8).

By thus linking Voragine’s medicinal references to a biblical passage, Bokenham can be seen to further reinforce the connection between the book of nature, the bible and his own textual production. Moreover, Isaiah 6 is of particular pertinence to Bokenham’s own authorial agenda in this section, since it can be read as the statement of evangelical and prophetic authority par excellence:

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

49

in anno quo mortuus est rex Ozias vidi Dominum sedentem super solium excelsum et elevatum et ea quae sub eo erant implebant templum seraphin stabant super illud sex alae uni et sex alae alteri duabus velabant faciem eius et duabus velabant pedes eius et duabus volabant et clamabant alter ad alterum et dicebant sanctus sanctus sanctus Dominus exercituum plena est omnis terra gloria eius et commota sunt superliminaria cardinum a voce clamantis et domus impleta est fumo et dixi vae mihi quia tacui quia vir pollutus labiis ego sum et in medio populi polluta labia habentis ego habito et Regem Dominum exercituum vidi oculis meis et volavit ad me unus de seraphin et in manu eius calculus quem forcipe tulerat de altari et tetigit os meum et dixit ecce tetigit hoc labia tua et auferetur iniquitas tua et peccatum tuum mundabitur et audivi vocem Domini dicentis quem mittam et quis ibit nobis et dixi ecce ego sum mitte me.

[1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." 4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. 5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." 6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"] (Isaiah 6:1-6).

First of all, this passage is echoed in the Trinitarian number symbolism applied by Bokenham. The seraphim’s thrice repetition of “holy” was seen to represent the Trinity and thus to prefigure the coming of Christ, as were their three sets of wings and the Lord’s use of the first person plural pronoun “nobis”. More importantly, in the passage in question, Isaiah is engaged in much the same endeavour as Bokenham was in his “Prologue”: namely, establishing his authorial and evangelical credentials.

50

Part Two

In his prologue to the life of St. Elizabeth, Bokenham interpolates a further tripartite, three stanza interpretation into Voragine’s three part etymology. Voragine gives three meanings for Elizabeth’s name: “Deus meus cognovit” (“My God knowyth”), “Deus mei septima” (“My goddis seuente”) and “Dei mei saturitas” (“My goddis fulsumnesse”) (Graesse 1890: 752; Serʁeantson 1938: 9468-9). After his exposition of the first of the three meanings, Bokenham inserts the following interpretation of his own: Or ellys in thys threfolde cognycyoun Of god mow wele vndyrstonden be The thre dyuyn uertuhs, aftyr myne opynyoun. That ys to seyn, Feyth, Hope & Cheryte, Wych Elyzabeth had in excellent degree, As euery witty man may perpende That dylygently redyth hyr legende. What made hyr þe werd for to despyse In hyr tendyr age, & to han uyctory Ther-of in so many sundry wyse, But perfyth feyth, aftyr hyr reoule, treuly? Moyses through feyth so grete wex & hy That pharaos doughtir sone he forsuke to be, So dede þis Elyzabeth thys werdys vanyte. What made hyr to haue so greth pacyence In suffraunce of trouble & of aduersyte, And þat she neuere wolde make no resystence, But ful hope of god rewardyd to be? Wych seyth in þe gospel on þis degree: They shuld be blyssyd wych for ryhtwysnesse Mekely trybulacyouns suffryn & dystresse. That she had cheryte ys eth to knowe, Syth cheryte includyth oue & eke pyte, Of god & oure neybours both hy & lowe. I trowe þan þat moor had neuere noon þan she, As whoso abyde tyl hyr lyf red be Shal þerof heren meche experyence. Lo, þus þes thre vertuhs she had by excellence! (Serʁeantson 1938: 9481508).

Again, the triplicity of the interpretations is accentuated through its three stanza exposition. Again, this etymological passage serves as an occasion for an assertion of auctoritas on Bokenham’s part. He repeatedly emphasises the fact that this interpretation is his own, not his author’s – “aftyr myne opynyoun”; “I trowe.” Interestingly, he appeals for his readers’ acceptance of this interpolation, not on the grounds of textual

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea

51

authority, but on the basis of “experyence.” I will consider Bokenham’s treatment of the experience / authority dichotomy in further detail in the final chapter of the present study. Bokenham’s reworking of the etymological prologue to the Life of St. Agnes is far less elaborate. However, he does once again stress the numerological implications of the text, opposing two sets of three virtues (innocence, simplicity and knowledge then faith, hope and charity) to three vices (falseness, vanity and duplicity) over the course of three stanzas: Agnes dicta est agna, quia mitis et humilis, tamquam agna fuit. Vel a Graeco quodam agnos, quod est pius, quia pia et misericors extitit. Vel Agnes ab agnosendo, quia viam veritatis agnovit. Veritas autem secundum Augustinum opponitur vanitati et falsitati et dubietati, quia tria a se removit per virtutem, quam habuit. (Graesse 1890: 8) [The name Agnes comes from agna, a lamb, because Agnes was as meek and humble as a lamb. Or her name comes from the Greek word agnos, pious, because she was pious and compassionate; or from agnoscendo, knowing, because she knew the way of truth. Truth, according to Augustine, is opposed to vanity and falseness and doubting, all of which she avoided by virtue of the truth that was hers.] (Granger-Ryan: I 101) Agnes of agna, who-so wyl it seke, Dyryuyid was, seyth Ianuence. Agna is a lamb, a best ful meke And sympyl also, aftyr his sentence. Wych tuo to Anneys by good congruence Longyn, for in hem so groundyd was she, That fro meke & simple eek innocence Remeuyn hir myht noon aduersyte. Anneys also, as Þis clerk doth seye, Dyryuyid is of knowelechyng; And wurthyly, for she Þe weye Of treuthe kneu whyl she was ying; Wych treuthe, aftyr austyns seyng, Contrary is vnto vycys thre Wych Anneys uenquyssyd in hyr lyuyng, As falsheed, doubylnesse & vanyte. By feyth she ouyr-cam falsnesse, And by hope she despysyd alle vanite, By cheryte perfyth al doublynesse She set aside, & of Þese thre In hyr lyf we fynde good congruyte. (Serjeantson1938: 4067-87)

52

Part Two

In his prologue to the life of Mary Magdalen, Bokenham adopts a similar approach in foregrounding and intensifying Voragine’s numerological symbolism. The exposition of the name “Maria” in Voragine is as follows: Maria interpretatur amarum mare, vel illuminatrix aut illuminata. Per haec tria intelliguntur tres partes, optime quas elegit, scilicet pars poenitentiae, pars contemplationis internae et pars coelestis gloriae. De qua triplici parte intelligitur, quod dicit dominus: Maris optimam partem elegit, quae non auferetur ab ea. Prima autem pars non auferetur ratione finis, quae est consecutio beatitudinis, secunda ratione continuitatis, quia contemplatio viae continuatur cum contemplatione patriae, tertia ratione suae aeternitatis. In quantum igitur elegit optimam partem poenitentiae, dicitur amarum mare, quia ibi multam amaritudinem habuit, quod patet, quia tot lacrymas fudiit, quod inde pedes domini lavit. In quantum elegit optimam partem contemplationis internae, dicitur illuminatrix, quia ibi hausit avide, quod postmodum affudit abunde: ibi lumen accepit, quo postmodum caeteros illustravit. In quantum elegit optimam partem coelestis gloriae, dicitur illuminata, quia nunc illuminata est lumine perfectae cognitionis in mente et illuminabitur lumine claritatis in corpore (Graesse 1890: 407). [The name Mary, or Maria, in interpreted as amarum mare, bitter sea, or as illuminator or illuminated. These three meanings are accepted as standing for three shares or parts, of which Mary made the best choices, namely, the part of penance, the part of inward contemplation, and the part of heavenly glory. This threefold share is what the Lord meant when he said: “Mary has chosen the best part, which shall not be taken away from her.” The first part will not be taken away because of its end of purpose, which is the attainment of holiness. The second part will not be taken because of its continuity: contemplation during the earthly journey will continue in heavenly contemplation. And the third part will remain because it is eternal. Therefore, since Mary chose the best part, namely, penance, she is called bitter sea because in her penances she endured much bitterness. We can see this from the fact that she shed enough tears to bathe the Lord’s feet with them. Since she chose the best part of inward contemplation, she is called enlightener, because in contemplation she drew draughts of light so deep that in turn she poured out light in abundance: in contemplation she received the light with which she afterwards enlightened others. As she chose the best part of heavenly glory, she is called illuminated, because she now is enlightened by the light of perfect knowledge in her mind and will be illumined by the light of glory in her body] (Granger Ryan I 374).

In Bokenham, we find the following:

Etymology, the Trinity and the Legenda Aurea And wurthyly þis name Marye To hyr perteynyth, as it semyth me. For as legenda aurea doth specyfye, Maria hath þese interpretacyouns thre, Fyrst it betoknyth “a byttyr se,” “An illumynere,” or ellys, “maad lyht;” And by þese thre thyngys we vndyrstond moun Þe thre best þingys wych þis mary ches, As outward penaunce & inward contemplacyoun, And upward blys wych neuyr shal ses; Of wych god seyd with-owtyn lees That þe beeste part to hir ches mary, Wych euere shal endure & neuere dyscrees, But with hyr abydyn eternally. The first part wych þat hycht penitence Be-cause of þe synne, wych is getyng of blys, Shal hyr be byrefth by no violence; Ner þe secunde, of contemplacyoun, for þat is Contunyd with heuenely ioy wych neuere shal mys, Where-fore it may not fayl in no degree; Nere þe thrydde, of heuene, may sece I-wys, For þe mesure þere-of is eternyte. For-as-mych þan as þis mary The best part chees of penaunce doyng, “A byttyr se” be clepyd ryht conuenyently She may, me semyth, for in þat thing Greth byttyrnesse she felt whan repenting Be-hynde cryst she stood shamefastly, And with þe treys shed in hyr wepyng Hys feet she wessh ful deuouthly. In þat also þat of inwarde contemplacyoun The best part she ches in þis lyf here, To hyr longyth þe secunde interpretacyoun, Wych is to seyn “an illumynere,” Of “a yeuere of lyht,” in wurdys more clere; For in hyr contemplacyoun she took swych lyht Wyth wych many oon, as ye aftyr shul here, In goostly goodnesse she maad shyn bryht. In þat þe best part of heuenely blys Thys mary ches in hir affeccyoun, Wurthyly “illumynyd” she clepyd is, For now abouyn in þe celestial regyoun Illumynyd she is with clere cognycyoun In hir soule, and aftyr shal finally, When complet is þe general resurreccyoun, Illumynyd bene in hyr glorious body (Serjeantson 1938: 5271-318).

53

54

Part Two

Again, Bokenham reinforces Voragine’s numerological symbolism through repetition (“Maria hath þese interpretacyouns thre”; “And by þese thre thyngys we vndyrstond moun / Þe thre best þingys …”) and by dedicating a full stanza to each of the “interpretacyouns thre” of Mary’s name. That the prominence afforded by Bokenham to the number three in this prologue constitutes an allusion to the trinity is particularly evident in the Arundel version of the life, where this prologue is immediately preceded by the prayer to the Trinity which concludes the “Prolocutory” and where the life as a whole is given a tripartite structure (“Prolocutory” – prologue – vita). Finally, in his prologue to the prose life of St. Augustine, Bokenham again inserts a reference to the number three into the opening sentence of his translation, thereby immediately alerting his readers to the tripartite structure of the etymology. As in the examples given above, Voragine lists the three interpretations without specifically enumerating them: Augustinus hoc nomen sortitus est vel propter excellentiam dignitatis vel propter fervorem dilectionis vel propter etymologiam nominis (Graesse 1890: 548). [Augustine received his name either on account of his high dignity or because of the fervour of his love, or again due to the etymology of the name] (Granger Ryan 1993: II 116).

Voragine then goes on to number the three interpretations as he discusses them. Bokenham, instead, introduces the number three immediately: This name Augustin was congruently youyn to seynt Austyn for thre causis as for excellence of dignite, for feruore of loue and cherte and for interpretacyoun of the name (fol.170r).

PART THREE ETYMOLOGY, NATIONAL IDENTITY AND THE MOTHER TONGUE IN THE MAPPULA ANGLIAE AND THE LIVES OF NATIVE SAINTS

So far I have explored how etymologies serve an authenticating function in Bokenham’s translations of Voragine’s prologues. Now I will seek to define how this poetics of authentication, grounded in an originary auctoritas, serves to legitimate Bokenham’s specifically vernacular voice and to identify it with a stable national community. I have already outlined how Bokenham seeks to distinguish himself from his aureate forebears by stressing the plainness of his style. I will now argue that he presents this distinction in terms not only of poetic but also of national identity. The courtly diction of Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate is highly Latinate and replete with French loan-words. It thus reflects a linguistic corruption on which Higden laments at some length in Book Two of the Polychronicon, Bokenham’s source in his Mappula Angliae: Angli quoque, quamquam ab initio tripartitam sortirentur linguam, austrinam scilicet, mediterraneam, et borealem, beluti ex tribus Germaniae populis procedentes, ex commixtione tamen primo cum danis, deinde cum Normannis, corrupta in multis patria lingua peregrinos jam captant boatus et garritus. Haec quidem nativae linguae corruptio provenit hodie multum ex duobus; quod videlicet pueri in scholis contra morem caeterarum nationum a primo Normannorum adventu, dereliction proprio vulgari, construere Gallice compelluntur; item quod filii nobelium ab ipsis cunabulorum crepundiis ad Gallicum idioma informantur (Babington and Lumby 1865-8: II, 158).

Bokenham’s of this passage translation is as follows: Angli, alle-be-hit þat from the firste begynnynge, aftir þe III dyuersytees of peeplis of Germayne þe whiche they comyne of, (þei) hadyn III dyuersites of sowndyngis yn hure language and yn þe III dyuerys places, as Sowþe, Norþe, & Mydlonde, yet of commyxtioun dyuers firste (with)

Part Three

56

Danys & seethe wt Normannys they hane corrupte her first natif toungis and vsyn now Ine wot what straunge and pilgrims blaberynge & cheterynge, noþynge a-cordynge on-to here firste speche. And þis corrupcioun of englysshe men yn þer modre-tounge, be-toke grete augmentacioun & encrees aftir þe commynge of William conqueroure by II thyngis. The firste was: by decre and ordynaunce of þe seide William conqueror children in gramer-scolis ageyns þe consuetude & þe custom of alle oþer nacyons, here owne modre-tonge lafte & forsakyne, lernyd here Donet on frenssh & to construyn yn ffrenssh and to maken here latyns on þe same wyse. The secounde cause was þat by þe same decre lordis sonys & alle nobylle & worthy mennys children were fyrste set to lyrnyn & speken ffrenssh, or þan þey cowed spekyne ynglyssh, and þat alle wrytyngis and endentyngis & alle maner plees and contrauercyes in courtis of the lawe, & alle-maner Reknyngis & countis yn hows-oolde schulle be doon yn the same. And þis seeynge, þe rurales, þat þey myghte semyn þe more worschipfulle and honorable & þe redyliere comyn to þe famyliarite of þe worthy & þe grete, leftyn hure modre-tounge & labouryd to kunne spekyne ffrensshe; and thus by processe of tyme barbariܾid thei in bothyn & spokyne neythyr good ffrenssh nor good Englyssh (Horstmann 1887: 30).

Bokenham’s translation constitutes a considerable amplification of his source passage in Higden. As always, he foregrounds the numerical structure of his source text (“III […] III […] III […] II […] The firste […] The secounde […]”). Perhaps the most interesting feature of this passage, however, is Bokenham’s repeated feminisation of the vernacular. “Patria lingua” and “nativae linguae” both become “modre tonge.” I have already noted the importance for Bokenham (as, perhaps, for any minimally self-conscious hagiographical writer) of the relationship between the hagiographical corpus and the saintly corpse. From this point of view, it is worth considering Bokenham’s assertion of the pristine, feminine “modre tonge” in the light of his considerable expansion on Higden’s passage regarding the remarkable number of incorrupt (often female) saints’ bodies in Britain. In Higden, we find the following: Willelmus de Regibus, libro secunda. Considerandum est quentus divinae pietatis fulgor ab initio susceptae fidei populum Angorum ilustraverit, quod nusquam gentium in una provincia reeriuntur tot sanctorum post mortem illibata corpora, finalis incorruptionis simulacrum praeferentia, sicut patet in beatis Ethelreda, Edmundis rege, Elphego, Cuthberto. Quod ideo fieri credo coelitus, ut nato extra orbem pene posita ex consideratione talis incorruptelae fidentius ad spem resurrectionis animetur (Babington and Lumby 1865-8: II, 30).

Bokenham writes:

National Identity and the Mother Tongue

57

But thus day y welle sey & hope for trewthe þat Policroncia in his last ende of this chapitre, rehersynge Willlelmus de regibus lib.° 2°., concludithe, seiynge on þis wise: Hit is to be considered deuovtely how moche cleere brightnes of goddis mercyfulle pite hathe syngulerly illumined & iradied þe peple of Ynglond from the bygynnynge of the feithe recevid, þat nowhere of no peple in oo prouynce be foundyne so many seyntis bodies liynge hool aftur hur dethe, incorrupt & hauynge þe similitude & þe examplary of of finale incorupcioun, as byne in Yngelond; and he exemplifiethe by seynt Edward and seynt Edmund kyngi, seynt Alphege & seynt Cutberde biscopes. Item at Wecestre in þe Cathedrallechurche beside þe highe-awtere one þe sowthe side þer liethe a bischoppe, called ȳohn Constaunce, þe body vncorupte, þe vestimentis in like wise as holle & as soote as may be; and seyt Audree wife twyes queen & maydoun. & y dar boldly by auctoryte of experyence addyne her-to kynge Edwardis doughtre þe furst aftir þe conqueste, Dame ȳone of Acris, whos body lithe hool & incorrupt in þe frires queere of Clare one þe sowthe side, ffor whome oure lordis grace booth of old tyme & newe hathe shewid þer many gret miracles and specially in III thynges, as in totheache, peyne in þe bake, & also of þe acces (Horstmann 1887: 11).

Bokenham here adds three additional references, two of which refer to incorrupt feminine bodies (ȳoan of Acre and Audrey). Moreover, two of Bokenham’s longest lives of native saints – the lives of Winifred and Audrey, both of which are in verse – deal with incorruptible female bodies. Winifred is restored to life after being decapitated by her would-be rapist, Caradog. Winifred is remarkable in surviving decapitation, a “violation of physical integrity” which, as Delany points out in the passage quoted below, represents the definitive coup de grâce for many saints: Considering the vast ingenuity of torture and its lethal apparatuses, it is curious that decapitation accounts for so large a proportion of martyrs’ deaths. Take two samples closest to hand: five of Bokenham’s ten martyrs die of decapitation, and the same proportion holds for the South English Legendary in which, by my count, seventeen martyrs are decapitated and another seventeen die by various other means – burning, stoning, crucifixion, stabbing, hewing to pieces, roasting, drawing by horses – even though these other means have failed with those who are finally decapitated. It is as if this violation of physical integrity, unlike any other, is universally acceptable to God as a cause of death (Delany 1998, 71).

Audrey, instead, manages to preserve her virginity despite being married twice, definitive proof of which is presented in the form of her incorruptible corpse after death. I would not consider it over-speculative to trace a connection between this stress on the incorrupt female body with

58

Part Three

Bokenham’s espousal of the notion of a pristine and incorrupt, albeit elusive, “mother tongue.” This sense of an identity which is transhistorically immutable and immune to historical and political fragmentation is of central importance to Higden’s treatment of Britain and Britishness in his Polychronicon. As Peter Brown puts it: There are two tendencies, two determining, structural motifs, which underlie Higden’s account of Britain. On the one hand there are the forces which produce unity, continuity, reassurance and security, and on the other those which produce diversity, change, doubt and instability. This is no easy balance, but a fragile, volatile and potentially disastrous tension between opposites (Brown 2002:107)

Etymology, in Higden’s Latin text, is a vital element in establishing the sense of continuity towards which he strives. To quote Brown again: Time and time again, etymology holds the key to identity, and forms a defining link between present and past. The changes which a word undergoes over time are symptomatic of deeper cultural transformations and may also be rooted in decisive, formative events (Brown 2002: 113-4).

If we are to read the Mappula Angliae as a companion to the lives of native saints included in the Abbotsford Legenda Aurea, this stabilising function of etymologies surely also serves to counterbalance the historical fluctuations and instabilities which characterise such legends as the life of Thomas of Canterbury. Bokenham’s only direct reference back to the Mappula Angliae in one of the lives of native saints – in the life of St. Winifred – provides an interesting instance of Bokenham’s attitudes towards etymology, genealogy and gender in his translation of Higden. Here, Bokenham in fact alludes to an etymology which does not come from the source passage in Higden, but which Bokenham has chosen to interpolate from elsewhere in the Polychronicon. The passage in question refers to the etymology of the word Wales in Chapter Six of Bokenham’s Mappula and in the forty-third chapter of Book One of Higden’s Polychronicon, where the names of the three parts of Britain are explained etymologically with reference to the three sons of Brutus: Locrinus, Kamber and Alabanctus. In itself, the passage provides an interesting example of the stabilising, authenticating function played by etymology in the Mappula and the Polychronicon, since it serves to counterbalance the description given of the historically unstable geographical borders of the three countries. Significantly, in

National Identity and the Mother Tongue

59

Higden’s text, this stability is afforded through an etymology grounded in a masculinist lineage – Brutus and his three sons: Tertia pars Britanniae dicitur Wallia, quae et Cambria, a Cambro Bruti filio sic dicta, quam ex parte orientali flumen Sabrinae quondam sequestrabat a Loegria; hodie tamen flumen Dee apud Cestriam in borea, et fumen Vaga apud castrum Stringuense in austro Walliam ab Anglia secernit (Babington and Lumby 1865-8: II 32)

Bokenham appends a further etymology, for the name Wales, drawn from Book One, Chapter Thirty-Eight of the Polychronicon, which attributes this name not to a son but to a daughter – to Galaes, one of the thirty daughters of king Ebrancus:9 The IIId parte of this lande in þe furst particioun was cleped Cambria, of Cambro, þe III. sonne of Brute, but now in oure vulgar hit is cleped Wales, of Gualesia, kynge Ebrankes doughture, þe wche was somtyme kynge there (Horstmann 1887: 12).

Since the passage which he was translating offered no feminine etymological and genealogical background for Wales, Bokenham went and sought one out elsewhere in the Polychronicon. It is this feminine etymology which Bokenham again chooses to cite at the opening of his life of St. Winifred, perhaps as a reflection of the sacred, inviolable feminine identity of this native saint. The passage in the life of St. Winifred is as follows: At the westende of Brytayne the more Lyth a prouince a ful fayre cuntre Wich aftyr Policronicas lore Buttyth on the gret Ottyan see Wich ys distict in to partys three Wyth dyuer watrys ful of hilys & valys And in oure vulgare now ys clepyd Walys. But how this name cam of Gualesia Kyng Ebrankys doughtr wich ther was quen As yt of cambrio was fyst clepyd Cambria þerof the comodytes wich in that country been As bestys & foulys wax hony & been And many other thyngys here spekyn nyl y Wich seyd Policronica declaryth opynly (fol. 214r).

PART FOUR NATURAL LANGUAGE AND ORTHODOXY

By implying that his own plain vernacular is a “natural” language, and opposing it to the “conventionalism” of the aureate poetics of his predecessors, Bokenham was stepping into rather contentious political and theological territory. As Hilles has astutely pointed out, Bokenham is hereby opposing his own “natural,” “common,” implicitly feminine language to a specifically “Lancastrian poetics,” an elitist, masculinist “elevated diction […] that both exalts and conceals natural truths” which opposed itself to the “the seditious vernacularity of Lollard English” by implicitly limiting its own readership (Hilles 2001: 190-1). I have already associated Bokenham’s implied language theory with the Derridean “idea of the book.” I would like to conclude this chapter by illustrating how such a vindication of vernacular literary production risked broaching the boundaries of fifteenth century orthodoxy. In a recent article to which I will refer at some length in the next chapter, Winstead suggests that the increased openness which she perceives in Bokenham’s attitude to Christian education in the later lives may well be in some measure a response to “the controversies swirling around Reginald Pecock” in the 1450s (Winstead 2011: 85). In a sermon at St. Paul’s Cross in 1447, Pecock spoke in defence of bishops who chose not to preach, depreciating the efficacy of the spoken sermon and instead endorsing writing as the most fitting tool for Christian instruction. In presenting such an effective group of preachers, Bokenham may, on some level, well have been seeking to refute Pecock’s claims. On the other hand, Pecock was also a “passionate advocate of lay religious instruction” and of natural reason as a tool for interpreting scripture (ibid.). His writings are characterised by a hermeneutic optimism – by a faith in the ultimate connection between the divine book of creation and books of human creation – which has something in common with that evinced in Bokenham’s deployment of etymology as an authenticating strategy. Perhaps Bokenham would not have disagreed entirely with the following statement from The Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy in which Pecock describes natural reason as an “inward preciose book and

62

Part Four

writing” which is of far more value than any number of established textual authorities: And sithen it is so, that alle the trouthis of lawe of kinde whiche Crist and hise Apostlis taughten and wroten weren bifor her teching an writing of resounis doom, passing alle outward bookis in profite to men for to serve God […]: it muste needis folewe that noon of the seid treuthis is grounded in the wordis or writingis of Crist or of the Apostlis, but in the seid inward preciose book and writing buried in mannis soule, out of which inward book and writing mowe be taken bi labour and studying of clerkis mo awe and service that myghten be written in so manie bokis which schulden fille the greet chirche of Seint Poul in Londoun (Wogan Browne et al. 1999: 101-2)

In sum, I would agree with Winstead that Pecock’s ideas can be seen to be at least in part endorsed through Bokenham’s positive portrayal of education in these later lives. Bokenham does not stray beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, but he does interrogate them. As Winstead concludes: Bokenham’s work attests to the complexity of orthodoxy in mid-fifteenth century England. It the spectre of heresy provoked repression and censorship, especially during the early 1400s, it also provoked thoughtful clergy, such as Bokenham, to reflect upon the foundations of their faith and to think and rethink what it means to be an orthodox Christian (ibid. 87).

I will further explore these themes in the concluding section of the next chapter, where I will consider how the close link between Bokenham’s preoccupation with female fertility and his implicit endorsements of the notion of a feminised “mother tongue” is reflected in his treatment of female preachers and scholars in his later legends.

CHAPTER THREE LINEAGE

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter I sought to demonstrate how Bokenham authorises and authenticates his own poetic voice by affiliating his own language to a pristine, originary linguistic community frequently associated with the feminised vernacular (the mother tongue). Here I will argue that Bokenham’s treatment of lineage reflects a similar preoccupation with gender and with the authority of origins. The connection between etymology and genealogy in Bokenham’s oeuvre perhaps emerges most clearly in the opening section of his life of St. Anne, where “the names of the progenytours / of marye” (Serʁeantson 1938: 1560-1) are analysed etymologically: Aftyr þe sentence of the hoy doctour Seynt austyn, Dauid dowth signyfye “The souereyn heuenely progenytour,” And salomon, “pesyble,” aftyr ethimologye, “The prince of pees,” betoknyth sothly, Whom the fadyr down sent pees to make, Perfyth oure kynde whann he dyde take. Be nathan, dauid sone also; “‫ڻ‬yfth” or thynge ‫ڻ‬ouyn” is signyfyed, Be whom descens leuy is made to, And “taken vp” betoknyth, or “applied” Where-in we be mystyly certyfyed That be he oure nature assumpt shul be To the secunde persone of þe trinite. But yet had it not ben sufficyent The vptakyng of oure frele nature Whiche wyth synne was almost schent, But recuryd had ben oure brosure, And he venguyshd þat causyd þe lesure; Wherfore in þe ordyr of oure reparacyon Descens is to iacob, toknynge “supplantacyon.” Iacob supplanted hys brother esau, Whiche toknythhe “row” or elys “hery,” And I signifyeth þat oure lorde ihesu

66

Part One Supplanted the deuyl, oure ruggyd enmye, Whan he on þe crosce ful schamfully Heng nakyd, fastnyd wyt nayles smerte, And wyth a scharpe spere stung to þe herte. Aftyr iacob, ioseph, as seyth þe text, In descence of the genealogye, Whiche toknyth “encres” stondyth next, Spouse of annes doughter marie, Madyr of ihesu, whiche to sygnyfie “A byttyr see” and “saluacyon”; Where-of, lo, a bref moralizacyon: Ioseph encrescynge in goodnesse, Must wedde marye, the byttyr see Of penaunce, be constant stabylnesse; And yf anne penaunces modyr be Whiche toknyth “grace” & “charyte,” He schal conceyuen be the humble vertu Saluacyon, tokned be þis name ihesu (1567-608).

Here, etymology and genealogy function together as interpretative tools for tracing the trans-historical significance of historical events. Language and lineage are inextricably connected in their eschatological function. Bokenham’s concern with lineage is multi-layered. Firstly, he displays a considerable degree of concern with the ancestry of the saints about whom he writes. Next, as a consequence of his rather oedipal relationship with his poetic fathers, Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate, he manifests an acute concern with his own ancestry as author and with the genealogy of his own textual productions. Then, as the authorial identity which Bokenham constructs centres on his claim to an authentic, incorrupt vernacular voice, he is also keen to deploy the authenticating function of genealogy in order to construct and consolidate a sense of national identity and community. Moreover, in the Clare Roll and in the Arundel “Prolocutory” to the life of Mary Magdalen, Bokenham writes genealogical texts specifically designed to support the dynastic claims of Richard of York over those of the Lancastrian line. More generally, this interest in legitimising York’s claims, which depended on the possibility of the title passing through a woman (Phillipa, daughter of Lionel of Clarence), coupled with his emphasis on the feminine nature of the vernacular (cf. his repeated references to the “mother tongue”) means that Bokenham repeatedly favours feminine lineages over masculine ones – matrilineage over patrilineage – and tends to foreground the mother figure, celebrating female fertility.

PART TWO GENEALOGY, GENDER AND NATION

To begin with the first of the three points raised above, it is a worthwhile preliminary to note that genealogical references abound in both Bokenham and his source texts. Thus, the life of St. Augustine opens by telling us that he was born “of a nobyl & worthy linage” (fol. 170v), Martina is “born of the grete roial blode of the senatours” (fol. 30r) and Ambrose carries forward the name of his father, another noble man of “grete worship and dignyte” (fol. 89v). Bokenham’s Life of St Audrey contains an interesting reference to Audrey’s pedigree, preserved at the monastery in Ely: This nobyl kyng and his worthy queen, Ioyned togider in perfite charite As the lawe of marriage wolde it shuld bene. Bitwix hem of issue had fair plentee, The pedegrue of whom, who so list to see, At Ely in the munkys bothe in picture He it fynd mow shal, and in scripture (fol. 117r).

Moreover, on three occasions when no genealogical information is available in Voragine, Bokenham interpolates an apology for its absence. Thus at the beginning of the life of St Mary the Egyptian, we find the following: Writen I wil liche as I kan The life of Marie the egiptian Euen as Ianuence me doth teche But here at the begynnyng I biseche Al them which it redyn or here Shul in tyme comyng that thei nyl here Loken that I shuld first descrie Of this woman the genealogie Of the pedegrue, that is to seyn That I shuld tellyn in wordis pleyn Hir fadris name and modris and so forth procede

68

Part Two In the descent of hir kynrede From the progentiours hir biforn (fol.86v).

Again, at the beginning of the life of St. Barbara, Bokenham apologises that, although he knows that the saint was “of the blode most worthie / Borne in that cite,” with regard to her “genealogie / I can fynde no more left writen” but the name of her father (fol. 4v). Similarly, in the life of St. Agatha: Of Þe nobyllest blood eek of Þat cuntre Lyneally sucedyng she dede descende, Aftyr Þe sentence of Þe golden legende; But no scryptur I fynd Þat kan descrye Of here kynrede Þe lyne, ner hyre genealegye Declaryn, ner hyr progenytours pedegre, Ner what hyr fadrys name myht be Nere hyre modyrs, treuly (fol. 59r; Serʁeantson 1938: 8356-63).

Notwithstanding all of this, in hagiography, saints must often divorce themselves from their own noble blood-ties in order to affiliate themselves to higher, spiritual family communities, which may be represented by monastic fraternities or even by the Trinity itself. Thus, for example, at the beginning of the life of St. Vincent, we find the following: This blisid vincent aftir nature From noble blode toke his escense But in cristis feth parfite and pure He surmountid naturis excelence Of grace … (fol. 46r).

Bokenham’s life of St. Christine is of particular significance inasmuch as it implicitly constitutes the ultimate version of what Freud calls the “family romance:” the replacement of real parents “by others of better birth […] replacing the real father with a superior one” (Delany 1998: 87). The “superior” father with whom Christine replaces the pagan Urban is none other than God the Father. Moreover, as Delany points out, Christine is repeatedly associated with the number three, underlining the fact that she has forsaken her profane, pagan genealogy in favour of the divine genealogy of the Trinity: [Christine and Urban’s] subsequent argument centers on the doctrine of the Trinity, or Urban fails to understand why, if his daughter can worship what she sees as three deities, she cannot worship more. This doctrinal point is present in all versions of Christine’s ordeal, as is the fact that

Genealogy, Gender and Nation

69

Christine has three persecutors. However, Bokenham has amplified these givens to foreground triplicity as the theological theme of this legend […]. He carefully emphasizes the stories tripartite division; and angel warns Christine in her tower that she will be tormented thrice (an incident present in the South English Legendary but not in Voragine); in one of her ordeals, Christine invokes the three Old Testament “children” saved from the flaming furnace (2719; Dan 3:8-30); she converts three thousand pagans by her example (2801-20; SEL has three hundred; 262); she is confined in an oven for three days (as in SEL, whereas Voragine has five: “per cinque dies […] permansit”); and she recapitulates the doctrine of the Trinity three times, with both her father and the judge Zyon (2835-42) (ibid.).

As if to underline her absolute rejection of worldly blood-ties, Christine throws a chunk of her own flesh back at her father during her torture, with the following words: “O ould shreu of yll dayis that pace, Syth thou desyryst flesh for to eet, Seke no forthere nere in noon other place. Have of thine own & faste gyne to frete” (Serʁeantson 1938: 2471-4).10

Having said this, it is surely consonant with Bokenham’s protonationalist poetics that the ambiguities which surround genealogy elsewhere in the legendary are largely absent in the lives of native saints. Although biological fathers are frequently superseded by spiritual father figures, the figure of the rejected or, indeed, tyrannical pagan father who appears in the lives of Margaret and Christine is absent in these narratives. Thus, although Winifred’s father Tyfid is largely upstaged by her spiritual guide and counsellor Beuno throughout the main body of the legend, his genealogy is nonetheless accompanied by praise for his virtuous Christian living: This nobyl vyrgine this blyssid Wenefrede Doughtyr was to oon clepyd Tenyht A worthy man wich lineally dede procede Ffrom the royal euene doing ryht A man of gret rychesse & of gret myht Ffor in north walys where he dede dwelle Was noon lych hym the soth to telle. And not oonly thys Tenyht ryche owtward Was by habundaunce of temporal possessyonis But also dayly in hys thought inward He hym comyttyd to goddys protection (fol. 214r).

70

Part Two

Similarly, although Wilfred, Audrey’s spiritual teacher, appears to have defied Annas by encouraging Audrey not to consummate her marriage, Annas’ treatment is sympathetic and he is again praised for his Christian virtue. Both of St. Dunstan’s parents are praised unconditionally, implying that Dunstan is the fruit of a robust indigenous spiritual community: This hooly and blissid man seynt Dunstan was brought forth of such fadir and modir in this worlde which afterward he shult mow seen for her meritis amonge the queres of angels in that other worlde (fol. 109r).

Elsewhere, although patriarchal lineages are frequently denied and broken, Bokenham proves far more positive in his treatment of matrilineal genealogy, the mother figure and female fertility. Gender, then, again emerges as a key element in Bokenham’s self-authorising and identifying strategies. Interestingly, when he traces Mary’s pedigree at the beginning of his life of St. Anne, Bokenham introduces his masculinist genealogy of ȳoachim by complaining that there is no genealogical information available on her Mary herself or her mother Anne – on the matrilineal line of descent: More-ouyr I wyl ye know also, As ierom & damascene do testifye, The custome of scripture no vsyth, lo, Of wymmen to wryte the genealogye; Wherfore, as þe lyne of marye Is knowe be ioseph & non othyr wyse, So is annes be ioachym, as þey two deuyse (Serʁeantsn 1938: 1525-31).

As Delany illustrates, Bokenham inserts female figures into the pedigree wherever possible, naming David’s wife “Bersabee” (ibid. 1521) and both of Anne’s parents: Ysachar hyr fadyr Was clepyd, & nasaphath hyr modyr (ibid. 1516-7).

Delany notes that, while it was common to refer to Anne as the daughter of Isachar, her mother’s name was rarely given. She concludes: It seems, then, that Bokenham availed himself of a late and possibly a local tradition in his naming here, rather than the more widespread patristic and patrilineal tradition that omits (or, rather, fails to invent) Anne’s mother (Delany 1998: 162).

Genealogy, Gender and Nation

71

As the invaluable study edited by Ashley and Sheingorn has shown us, the cult of Anne frequently served to counterpoise feminine lineages to patrilineal conventions. In the late Middle Ages Anne’s matrilineal family tree was presented as a counterbalance to the tree of Jesse. Moreover, there exist a number of pictorial images of Anne with the virgin and child which appear to seek to establish them as a parallel, feminine trinity (Ashley and Sheingorn 1990: 169-98). Moreover, the legendary as a whole reveals a significant tendency to foreground the mother figure, together with recurrent references to fertility, childbirth and prenatal miracles. Unlike Voragine, Bokenham begins his life of St. Thomas of Canterbury by including the apocryphal narrative of Thomas’ mother, a Saracen princess who followed his father back from the Crusades, which is almost as long as the treatment of Thomas himself (fol. 21r-22r). This section recounts three dream visions which came to his mother, apparently during the three trimesters of her pregnancy: Within short tyme aftir that this blissisd woman had conceived she hadde a dreme which made hir gretely aferd and abasshid ffor as hir thought al the water of the thamyse ran even unto hir bosome. Wherfore she feryd that aftir the comoun exposicion hir husbonde had ben afraied somewhere on the see[…]. But sone aftir she was recomfortid by a gode wise man which made a bettir interpretacion of hir dreem seyeng on this wise: he that shal be borne of the quoth he shal governe moche peple ffor by water in scripture is peple often signified. And a nothir holy man aftirwarde not moche discordyng from the tothir interpreted hir dreem on this wise: he that shal be borne of the shal han plenteous habundaunce of grace which is undirstande by water ffor liche quoth he as al Ingelonde is refresshyd and confortid by the plentevous comoditees of diuers marcaundises and richessis which ben conveyed in by thamiyse flode bodily, right so shal it be watrid and embawmed by the plentevous habundaunce of gres which shul issueu from thy childis brest gostely aftir the sentence of criste in the gospel of ȳohn where he seith thus: He that bilevith faithfully in me flodis of water of life shul flowen oute of his wombe. A nothir tym this blissid woman drempte that she was at Caunterbury and so she wolde han entrid into cristes churche with moche other hir wombe was to grete that she might entren at no dore that there was. Of which dreme she feryng that she had ben unworthy to entren was many day aftir right sorye and right hevy til the thrid vision came in which but little biforne she childed she drempte that twelve sterris of marvellous brightnesse felle doun from even even into her lappe. By which vision she gretely was recomfortid ffor by that she hopid that the childe which shuld be borne of hir shulde with singuler privileges of hevenly influencys be graciously illumined (fol. 21v22r).

72

Part Two

As elsewhere, Trinitarian number symbolism (the fact that there are three dreams) signals the importance of this sequence. Of particular interest here is the association of the body of the mother of the nation’s foremost saint with the geography of the country itself. The references to the river’s “plentevous comoditees of diuers marcaundises and richessis” and the nation’s “plentevous habundaunce of gres” could easily have been lifted directly from Bokenham’s Mappula Angliae. I have already noted Bokenham’s feminisation of the “modre tonge” in his translation of the linguistic arguments in the Polychronicon and his wilful insertion of a feminine etymology for the name of Wales in both the Mappula and the life of St. Winifred. Moreover, as Hilles notes, in the Claudian translation we find a similar identification of the nation with a fertile female body (Hilles 2001:210-11). Hilles writes, Female bodies represent both the abstract national community and the land itself; the women are clothed and adorned with the earth and its fruits (ibid.).

Thus, for example, England is personified as follows: Aftir her Engelond arrayed in clooth wrouܾte oute of shepis wulle Which be cepid in Calcedonye monstrys of grete mervaile Whos chekys be coveryd with Iron harde whos fete þe water hideth Her clothing feyneth the occian wawys (Flügen 269-72).

As Horobin notes (Horobin 2008: 140-1), in contrast to the Gilte Legende, Bokenham includes the three Marian texts in the Legenda Aurea – the “Purification of our Lady,” the “Assumption of our Lady” and the “Nativity of our Lady” - in his translation (56r-57v; 164r-166v; 179r180r). Rather frustratingly, the first leaves are missing from all three of these texts. The first of these texts contains an interesting instance of rhetorical abbreviatio being deployed in order to avoid a misogynistic reference. In the passage in question, Voragine is explaining why women were not allowed to enter the temple until forty days after the birth of a son and until eighty days after the birth of a daughter. Voragine provides the following explanation as to why the period of time is doubled for female offspring: In pariente vero feminam duplicantur dies, quo ad temple ingressionem, sicut et duplicantur quo ad corporis formationem, nam sicut in XL diebus corpus masculi organisatur et perficitur, et in XL die anima infunditur, ut saepius, sic corpus feminae in LXXX perficitur et LXXX die anima ut saepius inspiratur. Quare autem duplo corpus feminae tardius perficitur in utero, quam corpus viri et ei anima infunditur, amissis rationibus

Genealogy, Gender and Nation

73

naturalibus triplex ratio assignari potest. Prima, quoniam Christus assumturus erat carnem in sexu virili, ut ipsum sexum honoraret et ampliorem sibi gratiam faceret, voluit, ut puer citius formaretur et mater citius mundaretur. Secunda ut, quoniam mulier plus peccavit quam vir, sic et aerumnae ejus ab aerumnis viri duplicatae sunt exterius in mundo, sic ut duplicari debuerunt interius in utero. Tertia vero per hoc intelligi detur, quod mulier quodammodo plus fatigavit Deum quam vir, ex eo quod amplius deliquit. Deus enim quodammodo in nostris pravis operibus fatigatur, unde ipse dicit Ysai. XLIII: servire me facisti in peccatis tuis. Et iterum dicit per Psalm.: laboravi sustiens (Graesse 1890: 158-9) >In the case of a woman who gives birth to a female child the number of days is doubled as regards entering the Temple, just as the formation of the female body takes twice as many days. The organization of the male body takes forty days and the soul is infused most often in forty days, but the formation of the female body and the infusion of the soul take twice as long. There are three reasons (omitting the natural ones) for this doubling of the time. First, since Christ was to take flesh in the male sex, he willed to honour this sex and to endow it with more grace, so that the child would be formed and the mother cleansed sooner. Secondly, since the woman sinned more than the man, so her troubles are doubled above those of the man in the outer world and should be doubled inside the womb. Thirdly, this makes it clear that the woman has somehow wearied God more than man has, since she has sinned more. God is wearied somehow by our wicked doings, as he himself says (Isa. 43:24): “You have burdened me with your sins, you have wearied me with your iniquities;” and in Jeremiah he says (Jer. 6:11): “I am full of the wrath of the Lord, I am weary of holding it in”@ (Granger Ryan 1993: I 144).

Bokenham passes all of this over with the following: But why the daies ben doublid in formacion of a womans body and also of the infusion of the soul other thre causis Iannence assigneth the which who so list to knowen there he shal mow fynden hem (fol. 56r).

Moreover, as anticipated by Delany, Bokenham includes a life of St. Monica, mother of the founding father of his order (fol. 101v-3r). Taken together with his life of St. Paula, this means that Bokenham traces Augustine’s matrilineal genealogy back two generations. In addition to the already mentioned life of St. Thomas of Canterbury, both the life of St. Dunstan and the life of St. Clare (quoted above fol. 161r) refer to pre-natal miracles, witnessed by the pregnant mother. In the life of St. Dunstan, we find the following: And for god wolde shewen biforn what he shuld ben both in this worlde and in that other it happid upon the fest of the presentation of Ihnj in the

74

Part Two temple while he was in his modris wombe whan al men stoden in the chirche eche man light with a tapre in his hande al the tapirs sodeynly to bn quenchyd at oones. And sone aftir unwarly his modris tapir was light ageyn wherof al men wich weren in the chirche comen and light her tapirs wherin was signyfie what grete habundance of light of grace shuld procedyn of hym of whom she bare in hir wombe at that tyme (fol. 109r).

Finally, the legends of Margaret, Mary Magdalene, Anne and Nicholas of Tolentino are all very much concerned with female fertility. St. Margaret was the patron saint of childbirth, and I will suggest below (pp. 79-80) that her dying prayer draws some particularly interesting parallels between the conception and delivery of children and literary works. Central to Bokenham’s life of Mary Magdalen is her conversion of the king and queen of Marseille and the miraculous events which follow it. The queen’s barrenness is clearly presented as a reflection of the fact that, despite their great wealth, the royal couple are spiritually barren (Hilles 2001: 197). They promise to convert to Christianity, on the condition that they might conceive a child to continue their line (“to been oure eyr” Serʁeantson 1938: 5898). The queen conceives a child at once, and the king is so delighted that he is determined to go to Rome to hear Peter preaching. His wife insists on following him, falls into labour during the voyage and dies during childbirth. The king leaves his wife’s body and his new-born child on an island, praying that Mary will commend them both to God. The king spends two years “in pylgrymage & in preyer,” travelling to ȳerusalem with St. Peter, before heading back to Marseille and stopping off at the island to pay his respects to his wife and son. There, to his astonishment, he finds his son running naked on the rocks, playing at throwing stones into the sea. When the child sees his father, he is frightened and runs to the body of his mother to breastfeed. Indeed, it is the milk of his mother’s dead but incorrupt body which has kept him alive thus far. A further prayer to Mary restores the queen to life. As Hilles puts it, this central part of the story is thus a story of female fertility and the almost supernatural powers of the female body (Hilles 2001: 197).

Anne’s conception of Mary lay at the centre of some considerable controversy in the Middle Ages. To quote Delany: Controversy regarding the immaculate conception of Mary developed partly as a consequence of a particular formulation in a version of the early Greek-Christian Protevangelium, in which the Anne material is first found. One manuscript family of the text gives a different verb tense –

Genealogy, Gender and Nation

75

“has conceived” for “will conceive” – in the angel’s announcement to Joachim (Delany 1998: 83).

As a consequence of this, some theologians argued that Mary, like Christ, must have been conceived immaculately, without being tainted with original sin. Others, including Aquinas, Bonaventure and Albertus Magnus, disagreed, since such a theory denies the universality of Christ’s redemption (ibid.). As elsewhere, Bokenham avoids explicitly engaging in this theological controversy. However, as Delany’s sensitive reading demonstrates, he tends to foreground the natural, human quality of Anne and Joachim’s relationship and parental identities. Indeed, Bokenham’s version of the vita centres on Anne and ȳoachim’s suffering and eventual deliverance from infertility. At the beginning of the story, Joachim flees to live amongst shepherds after having been turned out of the temple by a priest who claims that the couple’s failure to conceive is a sign of God’s displeasure. The Legenda Aurea contains no life of St. Anne, although much of the story narrated in the vita is covered in the reading on the birth of the virgin. The narrative in this account, drawn in part from the Protevangelium of James, focuses on the annunciation to Joachim of Mary’s birth. We are told only briefly that the same angel subsequently visited Anne, and Anne herself remains voiceless (cf. Graesse 1890: 87-8 and Granger Ryan 1993: II 152). Unfortunately, this section of the Abbotsford translation is missing, so we cannot know how Bokenham translated it. Nevertheless, and in marked contrast, the central focus at the beginning of Bokenham’s life of St. Anne is Anne’s own suffering and anxiety, which is treated very sympathetically, and the subsequent angelic annunciation with which she is visited. Anne delivers two extensive first person prayers, lamenting both the absence of her husband and their lack of issue. Anne’s first speech evokes a considerable pathos, which has little to no precedent in Bokenham’s sources: O souerayne euerelastynge maiste, Which hast been euere & be schal Regnynge in stable eterenyte, Whos regne may neyþer bowe ne fal, To whom eeke eche creature mortal Must obey – now, lorde, in þis need, Vp-on me rew for thy nobylhede! A, lorde of israle most myhty, Syth þu no chylderne hast youe me to, What haue I trespascyd geyn That þus my spouse þu takyst me fro? For ful fyue monythes be passyd & go

76

Part Two Syth I of hym had no tydynge, Wether he be dede or ellys lyuynge. Now help me, lorde, I the beseche, And graunte me grace to haue knowynge Were I myht my husbonde seche; For yf I knew where, wyth-owt letynge I wolde hym seke, yf he were lyuynge, And yf he ded were, his sepulture I wolde enbelshyn wyth besy cure. For, lorde, þu knowyst how affecteuously I hym now loue and euere haue do, Syth we first knyt were lawfully, Past alle creatures; lorde, helpe me so! And yf þe knot be now vn-do Of oure spousayle, I noon but the Know, lorde, that may my confort be (Serjeantson 1938: 1721-48).

Immediately after this soliloquy, as in the Protovangelium of James, Anne observes a sparrow feeding its chicks and delivers another prayer, this time in a more resigned, philosophical vein: And whan she roos from hyr prayer And casuelly lyftyde vp hyr eye, In a fayr, fresh & grene laurere A sparow fedynge hyr bryddes she seye In a nest made of mossh & cleye, And a-non she fel down sodeynly Vp-on hyr knees & þus gan crye: “O lorde almyhte, whiche hast ouere al Souerente, & to euere creature, Fyssh, ful & bestis, boþe more & small, Hast grauntyd be kindly engenderrure To ioyen in þe lykenesse of ther nature, And in ther issu, iche aftyr his kynde, To worship of thy name with-owten ende! And I thank þe, lorde, þat þu to me Hast don as it is to thy plesaunce, Fro þe yefte of thy benygnyte Me excludynge, swych is my chaunce. ܾet if yt had lykede me to avaunce Wyth sone or dowgter, in humble wyse I wolde it han offrede to thy seruyse (ibid. 1756-776).

Delany sees in this an implicit endorsement of the theory of Bokenham’s natural conception by Anne and her husband:

Genealogy, Gender and Nation

77

There is a theology in all this. These are the people through whom Jesus took a natural created form. Hence we are asked to see them in their full naturalness which they share with the rest of natura naturata. The strong current of natural imagery suggests that the annonce fait à Anne in no way diminishes her animal nature and furthermore implies that Mary was conceived in a natural way (Delany 1998: 83).

Like the life of St. Anne, the life of St. Nicholas of Tolentino begins with the saint’s parents praying to God to deliver them from the curse of barrenness – that he wolde vouchhesaf for his mercy to dispensen with hem of the opprobrie of barennesse and to sendyn hem the syn of marriage that ys to seyne fruht of here woumbe to honour and preysynge of his holy name (fol. 181r).

The pedagogical example of the parents is afforded a perhaps unusually weighty role in the development of this remarkable child-saint: Nicholas was educat in good maneris by the fadris and modris noble example and holy and diligent exhortaciouns and continuel and day ammoniciouns (fol. 181v).

Moreover, Horobin remarks that this life is unusual among Bokenham’s legends for the prominence placed upon his miracles, many of which are concerned with women, children and childbirth (Horobin 2007: 940).

Most significantly, the text concludes by recounting a series of miracles which Bokenham tells us he has read about at the shrine in Tolentino. These include the story of a woman called Margaret who is comforted by Nicholas after a series of still births. Nicholas promises her that she will soon deliver a healthy daughter and that any children she conceives in the future will live (fol. 182v). He also goes on to heal one of Margaret’s daughters of “a swell undyr hyr chynne”. Another woman, we are told, successfully delivers a healthy baby after eight days of labour, during which all the experts had given mother and child up as lost, as soon as Nicholas prays for her (ibid.). Towards the end of this closing section, Bokenham writes: Brefly I telle not neyther how many wuman han ben holpe by hym in peril of chyldryn ner how manye thorght his meryth were mad able to conceyuyn (183v).

PART THREE GENEALOGY, GENDER AND SUCCESSION

From one point of view, there were clear political motives behind Bokenham’s tendency to favour matrilineal genealogy over the patrilineal. The Arundel “Prolocutory in-to Mary Mawdelyns Lyf,” in which Bokenham describes Isabel Bourchier’s commissioning of the vita which is to follow, contains the following apparently rather baffling pedigree of Bourchier’s brother, Richard of York: In presence I was of þe lady Bowsere, Wych is aso clepyd þe countesse of hu, Doun conueyid by þe same pedegru That þe duk of York is come, for she Hys sustyr is in egal degre, Aftyr þe duchesse of york clepyd Isabel, Hyr fadrys graunhtdam, [wych soth to tel], In spayn kyng Petrys dowtyr was, Wych wyth a-noþir sustyr, so stood þe caas, The toyal title of spayne to englond broth, And, for þe fyrste sustyr yssud noht But deyid baren, al stood in þe toþir, By whhom þe ryht now to þe broþir Of seyd dame Isabelle, to seyn al and sum, The duk of york, syr Rychard, is come, Wych god hym send, yf it be hys wyl (Serʁeantson 1938: 5004-19).

This pedigree is clearly designed to support Richard of York’s dynastic claims. However, it is peculiar for two reasons. Firstly, as Delany puts it, this is an odd pedigree with which to praise an English lord and noblewoman, whose exalted English ancestry included Edward III in both their maternal and paternal lines (Delany 1998: 133).

Secondly, as Hilles points out, the genealogy is wrong. Costanza of Castille in fact bore two children: ȳohn, born in 1374, who died in infancy, and Catalina (1372-1418) who married Enrique III of Castille and Leon.

80

Part Three

The couple had an only son, ȳuan II, who had, in turn, produced a sole heir, Enrique IV, “a twenty-year-old virgin called Henry the Impotent” (Hilles 2001: 197). What Bokenham’s presumably deliberate slip-up does as Carroll Hilles has observed, is to foreground the importance of female fertility in succession: Bokenham’s error serves to stress the role of women in the descent of the royal title and establishes a dichotomy between the fertile Isabelle and the barren Costanza. Isabelle Bourchier’s pedigree demonstrates the importance of women in the transmission of the royal title as well as their continuing importance as patrons and mothers (ibid.).

As a Yorkist sympathiser, Bokenham had political motives in favouring matrilineage over patrilineage, York’s claim to the throne passed through Phillipa, daughter of Lionel of Clarence (cf. ibid.: 201) and was contested by the Lancastrians on the grounds of the patrilineal principle of primogeniture (ibid.). Moreover, as Hilles writes, female fertility was one of York’s major political assets. Henry VI was unmarried until 1445, childless until 1453. None of his three Lancastrian uncles had produced a legitimate male child. In contrast to the impoverished Lancastrian dynasty, Richard of York and Cecily Neville had twelve children between 1441 and 1455 (ibid.: 200).

The Clare Roll similarly traces and celebrates York’s matrilineal genealogy and the fertility of the matriarchs in the Yorkist line (ibid.: 2000). The very opening exchange between the friar and the secular serves to challenge the secular’s masculinist assumptions: What man lyeth here? Sey me sir Frere. – No man. – What ellis? – It is a woman (Barnardiston 1962: 65)

This genealogical narrative will begin, not with a father, but with a mother. Towards the end of the poem, we learn that Cecily of York waited a long time to conceive her first child and feared that she might be barren. Her subsequent fertility is celebrated as the friar lists all twelve of her children, living and dead: Is there ony frute bitwix hem two? – Yea, Sir, thonks be god, ful glorious. – Male or female? – Sir bothe two. – The nombir oof this progeny gracious, And the names to know I am desirous, The order eke of birth telle yf thou kan, And I wil evir be even thyn owen man. –

Genealogy, Gender and Succession

81

Sir aftir the tyme of longe bareynesse, God first sent Anne, which signyfieth grace, In token that al her hertis hevynesse He as for bareynesse wold fro hem chace. Harry, Edward, and Edmonde, eche in his place Succedid; and after tweyn daughters cam Elizabeth and Margarete, and afterward William. ȳohn aftir William nexte borne was, Which bothe be passed to goddis grace: George was next, an after Thomas Borne was, which sone aftir did pace By the path of dethe to the hevenly place Richard liveth yet: but the last of alle Was Ursula, to him whom God list calle (ibid.: 68-9).

The poem closes with a prayer that both the duke and the duchess will live to see their line stretching forward into the future: […] and graunte that he And the noble princesse his wife may see Her childres children or thei hens wende (ibid.: 69).

PART FOUR GENDER, FERTILITY AND LANGUAGE

Finally, I would suggest that Bokenham’s assertion of the sanctity of the fertile female body ultimately serves to underline the sanctity of the vernacular text itself.11 The age-old association between sexual reproduction and writing has been much documented. We need only consider the ancient connection between the pen and the phallus, explored in two poems which evidently had a huge influence on both Chaucer and Gower: Le Roman de la rose and the De planctu naturae. In both of these texts, the phallic pen impregnates the feminine page with written language and the feminine word with a masculine textuality and meaning. On the other hand, patristic texts commonly identify the written text as a whole as feminine and the spiritual meaning hidden behind it as masculine. As Dinshaw summarises, this is because a defining characteristic of the female, in both classical and Christian exegetical traditions, is her corporeality, her association with matter and the physical body as opposed to the male’s association with form and the soul (Dinshaw 1989:19).

Although, to quote Dinshaw again, the Pauline model would discard the female [body] when the male spirit has been uncovered (ibid. 23),

a somewhat more subtle model emerged which went some way towards re-sacralising the feminine letter. Curiously, a source for this paradigm is to be found in the notoriously anti-feminist ȳerome’s reading of Deuteronomy 23:10-13 (ibid. 22-3). The passage from Deuteronomy is as follows: Sic egressus fueris ad pugnam contra inimicos tuos, et tradiderit es Dominus Deus tuus in manu tua, captivosque duxeris, et videris in numero captivorum mulierem pulchram, et adamaveris eam, voluerisque habere uxorem, introduces eam in domum tuam: quae radet caesariem, et circumcidet ungues, et deponet vestem, in qua capta est: sedensque in

84

Part Four domo tua, flebit patrem et matrem suam uno mense: et postea intrabis ad eam, dormiesque cum illa, et erit uxor tua. [When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife].

ȳerome reads this passage as a guide for those wishing to “use” (i.e. “uti” as opposed to “enʁoy” or “frui”) pagan texts: Quid ergo mirum, si et ego saecularem propter eloquii uenustatem et membrorum pulchritudinem de ancilla atque captiua Israhelitin facere cupio? (ȳerome 1910: letter 70. Quoted in Dinshaw 1989: 205-6).

The text as feminine captive should be stripped of all its “Pauline deadness” (ibid: 23). However, as Dinshaw goes on to note: The text, though stripped, doesn’t stop being a woman […]. ȳerome’s captive woman is instead betrothed and married (indeed, this is an enactment of marriage as a trade of women between men at war that LéviStrauss outlines); she begets servants for God […]. The truth of the text is itself feminine and fertile (ibid.).

With his assertions of plainness of style, Bokenham presents himself as stripping and redeeming the fertile, feminine “mother tongue,” uncovering her spiritual fertility – her capacity to multiply the community of the faithful. As I have already briefly noted, this parallel between the spiritually pristine text and feminine fertility becomes particularly evident in the life of St. Margaret. In Mombritius’ Sanctuarium, which was Bokenham’s source for the main body of the vita, Margaret’s dying prayer is as follows: Tunc beata Margareta coepit orare et dicere, “Deus, qui coelum palme mansurrasti et terram fundamentum posuisti et non transiuit preceptum tuum, exaudi, Domine, derecationem meam, ut, si quis legerit librum istum geste mee uel audierit legere passionem mean, in ipsa hora deleantur peccata illius; et qui cum suo lumine uenerit ad ecclesiam ubi reliquie mee, silimiter deleantur peccata illius. Quisquis inuentus fuerit in iudicio terribili et memor fuerit nominis mei, libera eum de tormentis. Adhunc peto, Domine, qui legerit aut qui tulerit in manu sua, uel qui audierit eam legendo, ex illa hora deleantur peccata illius. Adhunc, peto, Domine, et

Gender, Fertility and Language

85

qui basilicam in nomine meo fecerit, uel qui de suo labore comparauit codicem passionis mee, reple illum Spiritu Sancto tuo, spiritu ueritatis, et in domo illius non nascatur infans claudus aut cecus neque mutus. [The the blessed Margaret began to pray and say, “God, who have measured heaven in your palm and who have set the earth as your foundation and it has not exceeded your precept, listen favourably, Lord, to my entreaty, that, if anyone reads this book of my deeds or hears my passion read, at that hour may that person’s sins be blotted out and whoever comes with his light to the church where my relics are, likewise may his sins be blotted out. I also ask, Lord, whoever builds a basilica in my name or from his labour furnishes a manuscript of my passion, fill him with your Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, and in his home let there not be born an infant lame or blind or dumb] (Clayton and Magennis, eds. 1994: 213-5).

Bokenham expands upon his source’s references to childbirth, following a stanza on literary and artistic production with one on the saint’s intercession on behalf of women in labour: More-ouyr, lord, lowly I the beseche For them specially that my passyoun Othyr rede, or wryte, or other do teche, Or chrche or chapel make if they moun, Or lyht or launpe fynde of deuocyoun To me-ward; lord, for thy gret grace, Hem repentaunce graunte er they hens pace. Also if wummen in trauayyng be Oppressyd wyth peyne & greuaunce, And for helpe deuoutly do preye to me, Graunth hem sone good deliueraunce (Serʁeantson 1938: 834-44

In the Arundel “Prolocutory” to the life of Mary Magdalen, we find another example of such a connection being implicitly drawn between female fertility and language. Immediately after the genealogy of the Duke of York, discussed above, Bokenham provides the following description of the colourful garments worn by Isobel Bourchier’s four young sons: I saye, whyl þis ladyis foure sonys ying Besy were wyth reuel & wyth daunsyng, And oþere mo in þere most fresh array Dysgysyd, for in þe moneth of may Was neuyr wyth flouris whyt, blewe & grene, Medewe motleyid freshlyere, I wene,

Part Four

86

Than were her garnementys; for as it semyd me Mynerue hyr-self, wych hath þe souereynte Of gay texture, as declaryth Ouyde, Wyth al hire wyt ne coude prouyde More goodly aray þow she dede enclos Wyth-ynne oo web al methamorophosyos (Serʁeantson 1938: 5023-34).

Immediately after a passage celebrating the fertility of the family of York, we see Isobel’s children being praised as if they were rhetorical tropes adorning the Ciceronian meadow of rhetoric. They are compared favourably to the narrative woven into Minerva’s tapestry during her weaving competition with Ariadne and to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Such an implicit assertion of the spiritual fecundity of the feminised vernacular would have been somewhat contentious in the fifteenth century, since erudition and eloquence on the part of women and / or in the vernacular had come to be viewed with extreme caution. Both female preaching and the use of the “mother tongue” for theological discussion were frequently attacked in a language which focused on their specifically feminine corporeality (cf., for example, Bloch 1987). Bokenham’s stress on the sacrality of the female body, instead, seems to go hand in hand with a cautious endorsement of both, at least in the later lives in the Abbotsford MS. Indeed, perhaps one of the most interesting features of the Abbotsford MS is that Bokenham emerges as a far less conservative figure from this point of view.12 Winstead proposes some interesting observations on the contrast between the lives in the Arundel and Abbotsford manuscripts, suggesting that Bokenham’s later vitae of female saints indicate that he had developed a more positive and open-minded attitude towards female preaching and scholarship. The Arundel lives frequently reflect what Winstead refers to as Bokenham’s penchant […] for re-creating traditional saints to emphasise attitudes and behaviours that would be appropriate for contemporary women (Winstead 2011: 71).

As Winstead summarises, For Bokenham, affect triumphs over intellect; faith prevails where reason fails; and conversion is effected by God’s grace, not by human eloquence or wisdom […] The legends comprising Arundel 327 how little interest in pastoral endeavour, much less in Christian intellectual life, and little interest in how the saints themselves became Christians. One might attribute Bokenham’s lack of attention to teaching and learning to the gender of his subʁects, and perhaps to the gender of his patrons. Undermining the accomplishments of a female preacher or scholar, such

Gender, Fertility and Language

87

as Mary Magdalen or Katherine of Alexandria, or of a preachy wife like Cecilia, certainly works to make those saints more exemplary by contemporary standards of femininity. Bokenham wrote in a milieu rich in female religious enthusiasts. Though he was certainly eager to please his female friends, he may also have been wary of women like Margery Kempe – or perhaps even Isobel Bourchier, who apparently preferred the adventures of an apostelesse to the tears of a penitent. Yet the legends are by no means only about gender. Taken together, the bespeak a pessimism about the capacity of ordinary people – men as well as women – to reason and to understand their faith. They portray a humanity that must be wooed to Christ by spectacles and promises, or ravished by the Holy Spirit (Winstead 2011: 76-8).

In marked contrast, as Winstead notes: The most surprising feature of the Abbotsford collection is that we find among his holy women so many students, scholars and teachers – even preachers (Winstead 2011: 78).

Both of the two verse lives of female saints which we read for the first time in the Abbotsford MS treat of erudite female preachers. Rather than translating the brief life of Apollonia included in the Legenda Aurea, Bokenham elects to follow a distinct and less orthodox tradition. Voragine’s life follows Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History in representing Apollonia as an elderly woman, neither learned nor evangelical, whose teeth are knocked out by pagans and who willingly jumps into the fire with which her tormentors are threatening her (Graesse 1890: 293-5; Granger Ryan 1993:I 268-8). Bokenham (fol. 64r), instead, follows a tradition which had emerged during the fourteenth century which portrayed Apollonia as a beautiful young princess. (Winstead 2011: 79). Of particular note in Bokenham’s version is his, apparently unprecedented, “particular concern with preaching” (ibid.). After her baptism, Apollonia returns to Alexandria and begins to preach, much to her father’s displeasure: Which doon as soon as to the cite Of Alesaundir she returned ageyn Criste god alone to ben prechid she Even openly and in wordis pleyn And al othr goddis to be voide and veyn And moche people with hir doctrine Ffrom ydols worship she did incline. But when the kyng tidyng did here How Appollonia his doughtir christen was And prechid criste openly with careful chere Fful often to hym self he seid Allas (fol. 64r).

88

Part Four

Her father sends forty-five clerks to try to convert Apollonia back to paganism, but she surpasses them all in learning and eloquence. Even on the pyre, she continues to preach “with gret stedfastenesse” (fol. 65r). As Winstead argues, Bokenham’s life of St. Barbara shares with Capgrave’s life of St. Katherine of Alexandria its detailed development of the virgin martyr’s life before her passion, with particular attention to her conversion, and in its emphasis on her education and intelligence (Winstead 2011: 82).

Central to this vita is Barbara’s correspondence with Origen, which represents a rather bold depiction of an endorsement of a female preacher and scholar by a senior ecclesiastical authority.13 Perhaps the most poignant assertion of the spiritual fertility of feminine language is to be found at the end of the life of St. Martha. Martha is another female saint who is praised for her evangelism and learning (“doctrine and techynge” fol. 146r). One of the miracles included in the vita is the story of a young man who drowns trying to swim across the river to hear Martha preaching. Martha prays for him and he returns to life (ibid.). Significantly, at the beginning of the life, Bokenham describes Martha’s rhetorical skills with the adjective “facunde:” She was facunde and ful eloquent in spekynge and prechynge (ibid).

His source passage in Voragine is as follows: Erat autem beata Martha valde facunda et omnibus gratiosa (Graesse 1890: 445). >Martha spoke eloquently and was gracious to all@ (Granger Ryan 1993: II 23).

Bokenham here removes the reference to the more conventional moral virtue of graciousness in order to amplify the sentence’s stress on eloquence. Bokenham’s translation of one adjective with two (“facunda” – “facunde and ful eloquent”) is not unusual. He frequently uses double adjectives in his translations in order to couple alternative Latinate and Germanic translations (e.g. “the invencion or the fyndynge of the body of seynt steuene” Abbotsford fol. 152v; “so greth constaunce & stedefastnesse” Serjeantson 1938: 4233). Here, however, Bokenham is deploying two Latinate terms, adding the more common term “ful eloquent” as a gloss to the unusual adjective “facunde,” which is a more literal rendering of Jacobus’ “facunda.” These two words appear paired

Gender, Fertility and Language

89

again in Bokenham’s life of Mary Magdalen, when we are told that all those who heard Mary speak were amazed >…@ for the facundye wych she osyd here And for þe swetnesse of hyr eloquency (Serjeantson 1938: 5789-90).

Why, in both of these cases, does Bokenham choose to keep this unusual term, instead of substituting it with “eloquent” or “eloquence” and leaving it at that? I would argue that Bokenham perhaps retains this term because of its similarity to the word “fecund.” Bokenham uses the noun “fecundite” on two occasions: when the priest rebukes Joachim at the beginning of the Life of St. Anne (ibid. 1698) and in the Mappula Angliae, with reference to the Isle of Man (Horstmann 1887: 13). This association of language with fertility is in some ways recalled at the conclusion of the vita. In the Legenda, the life concludes by attributing the first account of Martha’s life to Martilla, her servant, who went on to pursue her own evangelical mission in Slavonia: Martilla vero eʁus famula vitam conscripsit ipsius, quae postmodum in Sclavoniam pergens et ibi evangelium Dei praedicans post decimum annum a dormitione Marthae in pace quievit (447). [Martille, a servingmaid to Martha, wrote her life. Later she went to Slavonia and preached the Gospel of God there, and, ten years after Martha’s death, fell asleep in the Lord] (Granger Ryan 1993: II 26).

Interestingly, Bokenham interpolates a brief parenthesis into this closing account, identifying the woman who calls out while Jesus is preaching in Luke 11:27 as Martille: Marcella, Marthys handmayden (whche seyde to oure lord as ys wrytyn in the gospel of Luc these wurdys, “Blyssyd be the wumbe that bare the and the brestys eek whiche youe the souken”) wrote the lyf of hyre maisteresse. The whiche Marcelle aftyr hyre maisteresse deth went in to a cuntre or a cyte clepyd Salauonia and prechyd there cristys gospel (fol. 146v).

This apparently unprecedented (Winstead 2011:79) identification of a female preacher, Martille, with this feminine figure who calls out during Christ’s sermon, praising Him and His mother in such clearly gendered terms is surely telling. As Winstead points out:

90

Part Four Bokenham’s identification of Marcella as the woman referred to in Luke 11.27-28 >…@ is intriguing: when Margery Kempe was accused of preaching, she was quoting those very verses from Luke to argue þat þe gospel ܾeueth me leue to spekyn of God (ibid.).

CHAPTER FOUR LOCATION

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

In the previous two chapters, I sought to demonstrate how the notion of communio sanctorum helped to authorise Bokenham’s textual productions and his own status as author by affirming the essential oneness of the Christian community across time – the community of the contemporary vernacular word with the divine Word and the typological continuity between contemporary Christians, the saints and Christ Himself. In the present chapter, I will examine the spatial implications of this concept. My examination will be three-pronged. First I will consider how Bokenham consolidates his defence of his nationally-located vernacular voice and identity by portraying a cohesive national community and by introducing episodes from British ecclesiastical history into the authoritative framework of the Legenda Aurea. Secondly, I will consider how the empirical, experiential focus evident in Bokenham’s treatment of geographical space serves to undermine and redefine existing, historically established patterns of literary authority. Finally, I will consider how Bokenham’s depiction of geographical locations as spiritually pregnant legitimises his own writings by foregrounding the continuity between divine and human creation. Specifically, I will consider Bokenham’s treatment of form and of number symbolism as being closely related to his treatment of geographical space, both being dictated by the notion that, in Gellrich’s words: Preconceived schemata, divine “paradigms”, are replicated as the real order of things, dictating their nature and organization (Gellrich 1985, 634).

PART TWO SANCTITY AND NATION

I have already suggested that Bokenham distinguishes his own language from the superficial Latinate ornament of the Chaucer-Gower-Lydgate triumvirate by laying claim to a specifically “British” voice. To do so, he needs to establish the existence and assert the spiritual superiority of a specifically “British” community. In the present section, I will consider how Bokenham depicts this national community, how he presents its exceptionalism – its “angelic” otherness - and how his treatment of Britain compares to that of other geographical areas – specifically, Italy and France. As recent studies by Brown (1998) and Lavezzo (2006) have demonstrated, Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon, Bokenham’s source for his Mappula Angliae, at once celebrates British exceptionalism and makes a sustained effort to cast the island in a central role in the “universal history” of which it professes to speak (Lavezzo 2006: 71-93). Bokenham’s translation, in addition to feminising the English vernacular and thus also, in a certain sense, English identity, also on several occasions attempts bring to the fore the role played by the translator’s own little corner or “angle” of the island – South East Anglia, together with other areas and individuals with which Bokenham appears to have had particular ties. The inclusion of ȳoan of Acre’s incorrupt, miraculous body amongst the wonders of the land (cf. above p.57) brings Clare Priory to the spiritual centre of this textual map. Again, Bokenham’s addition of an extra feminine etymology for the word Wales (cf. above pp.59-61) when he is describing the parts of Britain suggests a particular interest in the area further attested to by his translation of the life of St. Winifred. Moving, now from the Mappula to the hagiographical texts which it is said to accompany, it would appear that by translating (translatio – carrying over) texts from the obscure “British” hagiographical tradition into the hallowed, authoritative pages of the Legenda Aurea, Bokenham is carving out a place for the “national” tradition in which he situates himself on the better-trodden literary map of the canon. He does so through recourse to typology and to the notion of communio sanctorum. The

96

Part Two

difference of the marginal British community from canonical hagiography is overcome through the typological oneness of all Christian martyrs with Christ. Thus, for example, in his life of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, typological parallelism enables Bokenham to link the nerve centre of British Christianity, Canterbury, with the centre-point of the Christian world, Jerusalem: This glorious and gracious frende of God arrived at Sandewiche and was there received of the comoun peple with as grete ioye and gladnesse as an angel had comen doun from heven and also in euery towne from sandewiche unto Caunterbury the curates with her parissheyus received hym processionally crying and seyeng as the peple did which received criste goyng o Ierusalem a few daies before his passion. Blissed be he which is comen in the name of our lorde (Abbotsford fol. 23r).

The translation sections in the lives of Thomas à Becket and Audrey are particularly noteworthy for their depiction of a cohesive national community. In the translation of Thomas of Canterbury, the incorrupt body of the saint becomes the focal point of an outpouring of religious sentiment which unites religious and secular authorities with the commons: At the solempnyte of this translacyon were present the worthy fadir pandulphus the popis legat Stephanus cantuar >…@ Henricus kyng of Ingelonde with his baronage bishops abbottis … and other man of the chirche of diuers statis and regions which al to rehersyn in synguler and special wolde askyn grete tyme… And of the residue of peple the multitude was so grete that the cite of caunterbury with al the villages a grete viwn aboute unnethe myght conteynen hem fol. 128r).

The life of St. Audrey contains an interesting description of the gradual process whereby Ely, as Audrey’s home, became a religious centre at a national level and then a site of pilgrimage. Audrey’s fame, “not oonly” in “northumbirlonde” but “thurghoute al Ingelond in length and brede” leads to the establishment of the convent of which she becomes the abbess: Within the primordial circuyte of a yere That this noble gemme closed ben had The bright bemys therof shyn so clere That fer rounde aboute the bemys is sprad And not oonly northumbirlonde is made glad But thurghoute al Ingelond in length and brede The fame therof did sprynge and sprede And no wonder for aftir the gospel A cite on an hille may not hid be

Sanctity and Nation

97

Ner no man putteth vndir a bushel A lantern quote ofte but up setteth it he On a candelsticke that men mow it see Right so criste wold nat this geme hide But made it to shyne aboute on ethe side. For which cause within a short space Bildid was in hir owen cuntre A nunnery, a ful religious place Where abbesse to ben provided was she In thilk region which clepid was Elge In tho daies, but as now sothely It in our vulgaris clepid Ely (fol. 118v).

Sexburger’s decision to translate Audrey’s relics is a consequence of the manner in which her fame has continued to spread “abrode in many a cuntre”: But yit for as moche as biforn That light undir a bushel may nat hyd be Right so this gemme hir bright bemys Wide spred abrode in many a cuntree Of myraclis werkyng by grete plentee Ffor which moche peple came hir to seke In place where she lay lowly and meke And whan the abbesse Sexburgh such habundance Of myraclis encresyn sawe there dayly She hir purposid to translate and enhauncen Oute of that place hir sustris body Where it lay first and more reverently It leyn that pilgrymes thider coming shul moun The more therby to be stired to deuocioun (fol. 119r).

Bokenham’s depiction of other local communities – specifically, of those located in Italy and France – is similarly geared towards furthering Bokenham’s politically partisan vision of the English nation. His portrayal, in the life of St. Faith, of the Aquitaine region in the South of Franceis a case in point. Faith was martyred in Agen, which is in the Lotet-Garonne province in Aquitaine. Her body was subsequently translated to Conques, another town in the same area (Delany 1998: 165). As Delany demonstrates, the Aquitaine region was of crucial significance to all those interested in the development of the Hundred Years’ War in general and in the fortunes of Richard of York in particular. Normandy and Aquitaine (or Guyenne) were

98

Part Two the two strongholds of English influence in France, the most loyal to England and the last to be re-conquered by Charles VII (ibid.).

In 1443, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was appointed Captain-General of Guyenne, much to the chagrin of Richard of York, whose authority as lieutenant-general of France (1440-1445) was thus effectively compromised. In addition, as Delany remarks: Even worse was the financial pressure and humiliation Richard had to endure during this period, for while he went begging to the royal council for money to pay his soldiers in Normandy, the limited funds that were available were channelled instead to Somerset for the Guyenne campaign (ibid. 166).

John Beaufort’s third son, Edmund, the second Duke of Somerset, would subsequently replace Richard as lieutenant-general, a development which may perhaps have been a factor in the composition of the Stilicho translation. To quote Jones: York’s interest by late 1446 in a translation of Claudian’s life of Stilicho may have reflected an identification with an able soldier undermined by a conspiring Court party (Jones 1989: 294).

The consequences of this fermenting rivalry between York and the Beaufort family would be grave indeed. In Jones’ words, the personal enmity between the two dukes >would be@ central to events leading up to the civil war (ibid. 285-6).

For Richard, Aquitaine was a setting “full of familial and dynastic associations” (Delany 1998: 166): Richard of York’s paternal uncle Edward, earl of Rutland and duke of York, was a lieutenant in Guyenne from 1401 to 1404. His death at Agincourt in 1415 brought the ducy of York to the four-year-old Richard. But the Lancastrians were widely resented in Guyenne, partly because the deposed Richard II had been born in Bordeaux and, more important, because Lancastrian policy – beginning with John of Gaunt, created the territory’s overlord in 1390 – had always threatened, or seemed to threaten, traditional Gascon privileges and autonomy (ibid.).

Bokenham’s reactions, as a Yorkist supporter, to Somerset’s disastrous leadership, which would soon lead to the loss of Guyenne, can be to some extent traced in his treatment of Faith’s translation. Unusually, the need to translate Faith’s body is not attributed to a “failure of the community of

Sanctity and Nation

99

origin to honour the body properly” (ibid. 167), but rather to a negligence and inadequacy which is described in vague terms and not specifically attributed to any party. Although “Crystyn men dedyn alle here dylygence / Them to beryin wyth greth reuerence,” nonetheless “but symple was þe place” (Serjeantson 1938: 3985-6). Bishop Dulcidius, who removes Faith’s body, is a Gascon and therefore a representative of a people loyal to the English administration and, specifically, to the house of York. He is presented as performing the translation out of a spirit of religious community and “civic pride” (Delany 1998: 167-8): Hym þoght it was ful expedyent For þe comoun profyth of þat cyte, To make a chyrche from þe fundament, Wych in honoure of feyth shuld halwyd be (Serjeantson 1938: 3993-6).

Bokenham’s treatment of the relations between Brittany and Britain in his version of the legend of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins reflects a similar set of concerns. The independent Duchy of Brittany was much coveted by Britain and France throughout the Hundred Years’ War, although its neutrality in the Anglo-French conflict had been officially established by the 1381 Treaty of Guérande, which obliged the Duke of Brittany to exclude all English from his council and his military commands. Viewed against this background, Bokenham’s telling legend of the eleven thousand virgins, in which a proposed (although never consummated) marital alliance unites the two kingdoms and wins the respect and fellowship of no lesser an authority than the pope, might well have served something of a wish-fulfilment function. At the beginning of the story, the powerful pagan king of England sends an envoy to Brittany to ask its Christian king for the hand of his daughter, Ursula. Ursula convinces her doubtful father to agree, on condition that she is allowed to set off on a three year pan-European pilgrimage, accompanied by eleven thousand virgins. It is at this stage that Bokenham makes a rather interesting departure from his source in Voragine. While Voragine’s version would have it that the virgins come from both England and Brittany, in Bokenham’s translation all of the virgins are English. Voragine’s Ursula asks that the virgins be sent by both her father and the king (“rex cum patre”- Graesse 1890: 702), while Ursula simply asks that “þei” (i.e. the English) should send her company. With the exception of their Breton leader, then, Bokenham turns the 11,000 virgins into native saints. Bokenham further stresses the English nationality of the virgins in the stanza in which he describes their recruitment to the cause. Interestingly, and unlike Voragine, he also emphasises their exceptional

100

Part Two

beauty in a manner which somewhat recalls his stress on English exceptionalism in the Mappula: And anoon were gadryd, fram ych cuntre Of ynglond, maydyns to þis entent, The feyrest þat ony-where myth founnde be, And ouyr to Vrsula þei were sent (Serjeantson 1938: 3230-3).

As I have already mentioned, we know that Bokenham travelled to Italy on several occasions, and it is the only non-British location for which he provides first-hand accounts of his visits to shrines (in his lives of saints Margaret, Laurence and Nicholas of Tolentino). This bringing together of pilgrimage experiences nationally and in Italy serves, from one point of view, to validate and elevate the British holy sites by grouping them – at least in the case of the shrines to Laurence and Margaret – with more historically established cults and locations. On the other hand, the turbulent Italy which emerges in the Arundel preface to the life of St. Margaret, where the author describes himself as being set upon by “a cruel tyraunth … and fyue mo men” (ibid. 162) might be seen to serve as a foil to the cohesive indigenous spiritual community projected in the lives of native saints. As Delany convincingly argues, Bokenham may have been in Venice on this occasion as an “observer at the 1438 Ferrara-Florence Council at which The safety of travellers was an especially serious problem >…@ because of the fragmented Italian political situation and, consequently, competing loyalties to different ecclesiastical councils and schismatic popes (Delany 1998: 8).

PART THREE GENDER, VERNACULAR AND NATION

In Chapter Two of the present study, I explored how Bokenham defended his own vernacular voice in specifically gendered terms. Significantly, he also depicts England as a geographical location in a distinctly feminine light. I have already cited the Claudian translation, in which Britain is personified through a fertile, feminine body (cf. above p.68 ; Flügen 26972), and the prophetic dreams of St. Thomas of Canterbury’s mother, which serve to establish a connection between this famous native saint’s mother and national geography (cf. above p.67-8; fol. 21v-22r). I have also noted how Bokenham adds two feminine examples (Audrey and Joan of Acre) to Higden’s list of incorrupt native saints (cf. above p.60-1; Horstmann 1887: 11). Again, as I have already, mentioned, Bokenham goes out of his way to insert a feminine genealogical-etymological root for the vernacular name “Wallys” (cf. above pp.56-7). In considering Chaucer’s treatment of Anglo Saxon England in his “Man of Law’s Tale,” Lavezzo presents some interesting reflections on Chaucer’s Constance which might also be applied to Bokenham’s feminised portrayal of his own nation and its incorrupt female saints. She suggests that Constance can be seen as “a gendered Other whose idealized, sublime femininity implies the sublime status of her isolated destination” (Lavezzo 2006: 103). She proceeds to present some interesting parallels between Chaucer’s approach and the arguments presented by the Lollard Walter Brute in defence of his use of English for religious writings in 1391. Walter Brute defends the sanctity of the vernacular by identifying Britain with the wilderness to which the woman in Apocalypse 12 (commonly identified with Ecclesiastica or the True Faith) fled. To quote the translation given in the 1583 edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs: Of this kingdome did S. Iohn in the apocalips prophecy (as me semeth) where he said, The Dragǀ stode before the woman, which was about to be deliuered of child, to the intent þt when she had brought it forth into þe world, he might deuour vp her sǀne: & she brought forth her child which was a mƗchild, who should gouern al natiǀs with an yron rod. And the same sonne was taken vp to God, & to his throne. And þe womƗ fled into

Part Three

102

the wildernes, wheras she had a place prepared of God, þt they may feede her. 1260. dayes. The woman fed in the desert. 1260. dayes. And agayne in the same chapter, after that the Dragon saw that he was cast out vpǀ þe earth, he did persecute the womƗ, which brought forth the manchild. And there were geuen to the womƗ two wings of a great Egle, that she might flee into the wildernesse into her place, where as she is fostred vp for a time, times, & a halfe time, from the face of the Serpent. And the Serpent did cast as it were a floud of water after the woman, to the intƝt tht he might cause her to be drowned by þe floud: and the earth opening her mouth, did heare the woman, & did swallow vp the floud which the Dragon did cast out of his mouth. Let vs see how these sayinges may bee applyed vnto this kingdom rather then to other kingdomes. It is wel knowen þt this kingdome is a wildernes or a desert place, because that the Philosophers & wisemen did not passe vpon it, but did leaue it for a wildernes and desert, because it is placed without the clymates. This place of the desert in the scripture seemeth here something hardly expounded. Vnto this place fled þe woman, that is to say, þe Church (which by fayth did spiritually bring forth Christ into the world) where as she was fed with the heauenly bread, the flesh and bloud of Iesus Christ, for 1260. daies,seing that for so many daies, taking a day for a yere, the Brytons cǀntinued in þe faith of Christ, which thing cannot be found so of any Christen kingdome, but of this desert: and wel is it said, that she flew to this place. Faith came into Britanny frǀ the East, not from Italy or Rome.For from þe East came the faith into Brytaine, not by walking in iourney, not yet by sayling: for then should it haue come by Rome, Italy, Almaine, France, which cƗnot be found: & therefore she flew ouer those places, & rested not in them, euen as a birde flying ouer a place, resteth not in the same: but rested in thys wildernes for a time, times, and halfe and time, that is. 1260. yeres from the first comming of the faith into Britaine vntill this present (Foxe 1583: V 505).

As Lavezzo concludes, By taking refuge in England, Brute’s apocalyptic woman suggests how that remote island, far from being a barbaric hinterland, instead possesses a sanctity appropriate for her own holy persona (Lavezzo 2006: 103).

PART FOUR GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE, AUTHORITY AND EXPERIENCE14

In my treatment of etymology and genealogy in Bokenham’s works, my focus was on how Bokenham lays claim to a form of auctoritas which is diachronically grounded – which rests on what Bloch terms the “authority of origins.” In this section, I will instead proceed to consider how Bokenham locates his auctoritas synchronically and how this synchronic traʁectory at times serves to oppose his own individual voice to historically established authorities. As I will seek to demonstrate, Bokenham’s emphasis on his own personal experiences at shrines tends to blur the distinction between world and text – between experience and authority. Bokenham’s legends draw on “authoritative” textual sources, but also on Bokenham’s own memories of sacred locations – on the words and images he has seen at shrines, on stories he has been told there and on his own personal experiences. Writing on Higden’s Polychronicon, Bokenham’s source for the Mappula, Galloway argues that [Higden’s writings] bespeak a present-looking rather than past-looking collectivity […] Like the personal voice of fourteenth-century vernacular “public poetry” that Anne Middleton has described, the dissenting personal voice of fourteenth-century monastic Latin chronicles is another trope for a collective contemporary English voice, capable of addressing a “common” audience “now” whose limits are implicitly national (Galloway 2004: 64).

Galloway goes on to assert that “Chaucer’s Wife of Bath is a compiler very much in Higden’s vein” (ibid. 69), inasmuch as Higden’s focus on natural sites and phenomena enables him to adopt an empirical, critical attitude towards authorities. Writing on the geographical prefaces included by Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Henry of Huntingdon, Lavezzo presents the following, further observations on the levelling function of the synchronic – on how the horizontalist trajectory of geography counteracts the elitist verticalism of chronology:

104

Part Four Because the diachronic matter >…@ celebrates the deeds of kings and saints, it often presents a hierarchic image of human relations on the island. But by focusing on geography, medieval English historiographers set aside such ecclesiastical and monarchic tendencies for the sake of celebrating Britain itself. While the Britons and the English are vertically linked to their religious and secular leaders in the diachronic matter of these texts, their geographic prefaces construct the inhabitants of Britain as a people horizontally united and blessed by their shared climate >…@, ample resources, and insular boundaries. By invoking space, in effect, the historiographers effectively transform the hierarchically structured populace portrayed in their chronologies into a community levelled and bound by the land (Lavezzo 2006: 81).

As I will suggest in more detail below (pp.101-6), when I treat of the theme of the translation of relics, the Arundel prologue to the life of St. Margaret is particularly noteworthy in its foregrounding and validating of authorial experience as an integral part of the hagiographical narrative. Here, while Bokenham attributes his version of the vita to a textual authority (to Jacobus and Mombritius) “aftyr the story,” he gives his source for the translation section in more vague terms. It is partly textual, partly oral (“bothe be scripture and eek be mowthe”) and is rooted in his own experiences on his travels (“The laste tyme I was in Italye”) and at the saint’s shrine: And wyl declaryn euene by and by Of seynt Margrete, aftyr the story, The byrthe, the fostryng, and how she cam Fyrst to the feyth and sythe to martyrdam, As ny as my wyt it kan deuyse Aftyr the legende; & sythe what wyse Be whom. & how oftyn she translated was And where now she restyth, & in what plas, As I dede lerne with-owte fayle The laste tyme I was in Italye, Bothe be scripture and eek be mowthe; Wyche story is no-thyng vnkowthe At mownt Flask – who me not leue, Lete hym go thedyr & he shal it preue – On thys half Rome ful fifty myle Or ellys more, where men begyle The wery pylgrymys kun ful wel Wyth Trybyan in stede of Muskadel; Where from Rome homeward ageyn Whil I was taryed wyth greth reyn Thys blyssyd virgyne I dede visyte,

Geographical Space, Authority and Experience

105

And al the processe I dede owt wryte Wych I purpose now to declare On ynglysh, & it brout wyth me to Clare (Serjeantson 1938: 99-122).

This passage is significant in its deployment of sensuous and empirical data (place names, local wines, physical distances, etc.) as an authentication technique. If readers do not wish to trust in Bokenham’s own testimony, they are free to go and see the shrine for themselves – to have the experience first-hand: “Lete hym go thedyr & he shal it preue.” The lives of Nicholas of Tolentino and Laurence are also significant in their conflation of textual and geographical authorities and consequent blurring of the boundaries between authority and experience. As I have already mentioned, the life of St. Nicholas of Tolentino concludes with a series of miracles, many of which are concerned with fertility, childbirth and maternity. The source for these narratives, as Bokenham repeatedly tells us, is Nicholas’ tomb in Tolentino, which Horobin suggests he may have visited when the general chapter of the Austin friars met in Tolentino in 1459 (Horobin 2007: 940): […] as it ys fowndyn wretyn ther he lyth at tolete (fol. 183r). […] as it is there foundyn wrytyn undyr sufficient testimonye (fol. 183v). […] as it is foundyn auctently wrytyn at tolete where he lyth (ibid.).

Bokenham’s source here is a written text – presumably an inscription on the tomb. However, its authority is inextricably linked to its physical location at the saint’s shrine and to our acceptance of Bokenham’s testimony as to its contents, which is grounded in his experience and memory. The life of St. Laurence again ends with a miracle narrative in which Laurence, surrounded by flames and accompanied by a group of children whom he has ʁust saved from purgatory, appears to an elderly monk so as to stop him from oversleeping and failing to wake up his brethren in time for matins. As his source for this account Bokenham gives first an epistle written by a vernacular author of local origins: Osbert of Clare. He supports this testimony with his own memories and experience at the saint’s tomb, dating back to a trip to Rome some time before Pope Martin’s death in 1431 (cf. ibid.): Osbertus de Clara, a munke of Westemenstyr and priour of the place the tyme of the translacyoun of Seynt Edward Kyng and confessour, in a pistyl whiche he wrot a nunne and hys nyste tellyth a notable and a confortable miracle of Seynt Laurence. And as I remember me weel the

106

Part Four fyrste tyme that I was at Rome in Pope Martyns tyme I saw the same miracle writyn on a table hangynge on the north side of his tumbe (Abbotford fol. 159v).

Bokenham concludes the account by referring again to his own experience of visual imagery at churches in Rome – a testimony which, he implies, might be verified by any visitor to the area: In remembraunce of wiche reuelacyoun men moun seyn in many a cherche in Rome seynt Laurence peynted on wallys and on tablys & stondynge in the middys of a fyir […] and smale chyldryn hangynge upon his lappe (ibid.).

In the lives of native saints, Bokenham repeatedly calls on his readers to visit the pilgrimage sites referred to and experience them for themselves. Such is the case with his description of Audrey’s “pedegrue” at Ely: This nobyl kyng and his worthy queen, Ioyned togider in perfite charite As the lawe of marriage wolde it shuld bene. Bitwix hem of issue had fair plentee, The pedegrue of whom, who so list to see, At Ely in the munkys bothe in picture He it fynd mow shal, and in scripture. (Abbotsford fol. 117r).

Similarly, in his life of St. Winifred, in describing the miraculous appearance of red spots on stones thrown into Winifred’s Well, Bokenham proposes that his readers go and try to throw a stone for themselves. Interestingly, Bokenham cites as his authority for this assertion, not a written text, but his host while he was staying at Holywell:15 But yf ony man dowte her of I wene That the kynde of the stony sys so to growe Lete hym brynge thedyr faryr & clene Stonys not spottyd & in the welle hem throwe And marke hem so that he kan hem knowe And aftyr certeyn tyme come thedyr agegn And as spottyd as othere he shal hem funde certeyn. Of this laste balade y haue no euydence, But oonly relacyoun of men in that cuntre, To whom me semyth shud be youyn credence Of alle swyche thyngys as ther doon be. For whan y was there myn hoost told me That yt soth was wythowte drede,

Geographical Space, Authority and Experience

107

For himself had seyin yt doon in dede (fol. 217v).

Here the experience of local people (of “men in that cuntre” who have “seyin yt doon in dede”) is placed over and above any other form of “euydence.” The same host is also cited as the authority for the testimony that immediately follows, which tells the story of a white monk from Coventry whose arms are covered with indelible red spots after he plunges them into the well.16 There follows a heated debate locally as to whether these spots are a sign of the saint’s displeasure or of a special favour. Eventually, the monk offers a devout prayer to the saint to remove the spots, which disappear as soon as he washes his arms in the well. The narrative structure here becomes somewhat more complex, in that the closing lines of the passage are delivered in the host’s own voice, the host providing a first-person authentication for the story which Bokenham has ʁust told: Lo syre […] so god me spede His story ys soth wich y you haue told Wherfore to reportyn yt ye may be bold (fol. 218r).

Perhaps most tellingly, in the passage from the Mappula already quoted above (pp. 53-4) on the abundance of incorrupt saintly bodies in Britain, Bokenham concludes by inserting a further example of his own – that of Joan of Acre. In a paradigm which dramatically dissolves the Wife’s famous dichotomy, this interpolation is justified “by auctoryte of experyence:” & y dar boldly by auctoryte of experyence addyne her-to kynge Edwardis doughtre Þe furst aftir Þe conqueste, Dame Jone of Acris, whos body lithe hool & incorrupt in Þe frires queere of Clare one Þe sowthe side, for whome oure lordis grace booth of old tyme & newe hathe shewid Þer many gret miracles and specially in III thynges, as in to the-ache, peyne in Þe bake, & also of Þe acces (Horstmann 1887, 11).

PART FIVE TRANSLATING CORPSES AND CORPORA

Perhaps the point at which the parallel between Bokenham’s “Englische boke” and the “book of nature” emerges most vividly – i.e. the clearest point of intersection between hagiography and topography – is his treatment of the translation of saints’ relics. Both textual and reliquary translatio “carry over” a saintly “corpus” (be it textual or organic) from one cultural and historical location to another. Both acts transfer the authority associated with that corpus temporally and spatially. As Peter Brown puts it, the translation of relics introduces an “indeterminacy of space” which symbolically reflects the “abolition of time” in the saintly dead:17 For how better to suppress the fact of death, than to remove part of the dead from its original context in the all too cluttered grave? How better to symbolise the abolition of time in such dead, than to add an indeterminacy of space? (Brown 1981: 78).

Translation frequently occurs as a consequence of historical change, be it good or bad. The saint’s enduring, supernatural presence is thereby opposed to the mutability of the worldly polis (Sanok 2007: 61-6). In the legend of the translation of St. Margaret, in particular, the saint’s body is repeatedly translated as a consequence of political upheaval and tyranny (ibid.).18 Austin, abbot of the church of St. Margaret, first decides to move Margaret’s relics following the fall of Antioch, due to a conflict between the city’s patriarch and its tyrannous prince (Serʁeantson 1938: 946-73; Abbotsford fol. 132v). He intends to transport the relics to Pavia in his native Lombardy, but is taken ill and dies in Souters. There, the relics are “solemne kept” at a monastery, where they perform “manye grete miraclys” (Serʁeantson 1938: 1176-8; Abbotsford fol. 133v). However, as a consequence of worldly (and, especially, political) instability, Souters, too, falls into turmoil, and the monastery is deserted: But for-as-meche as nothyng perpetual Is in this werd, ne stabyl in oo staat,

110

Part Five For the grete werrys that sone aftyr fel In thylk cuntre, thorgh stryf & debat Of sundry cytees, this place desolate Wythinne fewe yerys was, & stood aloon, Whos dwellers then for feer dede flen euerychon (Serʁeantson 1938 118490; Abbotsford fol. 133v).

Margaret’s body is moved to Ruyllyan, where it remains for one hundred years until this place, too, becomes a wilderness. That no clear reason is given for this sudden degradation creates an even greater sense of instability: Whan these two virgins in sam An hundryd her or more had shrynyd leyn, Swych myschef to Ruyllyan cam That down it was bete and maad pleyn; And so longe it so abood, certeyn, And wyth trees & buschys so wylde grew, That where it was anethe ony knew (Serjeantson 1938: 1205-11)

Some years later, in 1405, Margaret appears to two hermits, asking them to translate her body to Mount Flask, its final resting place (Serjeantson 1938: 1219ff). If we consider the rather frightening landscape which Bokenham describes in the Arundel “Prologue” to the vita, we might well surmise that this location, too, may well be on the brink of political chaos. Similarly, in the Abbotsford legend of the finding of St. Stephen, Gamaliel calls on Lucian to move his body, together with those of Stephen, Nicodemus and Abibas, since prayers for the intercession of these four saints will provide some relief from the drought and suffering which currently afflicts the world: […] vade igitur et dic ȳohanni episcopo Hierosolimitano, ut nos in honorabili loco reponat, quia, cum siccitas et tribulatio mundum concusserit, nostrorum suffragiis Deus mundo propitiari decrevit (Graesse 1890 : 462) Wherfore goo thou to Ioon the bysshop of ȳeshnj and sey hym that he take vs vp and burye vs in a more conuenyent plac nd a mre wurthi for syth that a gret drouthe and tribulacion hath put the word in gret trouble and heuynesse yt ys goddys wyl by meryt of oure suffragiye and oure preyere to be to the word auspicious and to shewyn hys mercyfulnesse (Abbotsford fol. 152v).

Translating Corpses and Corpora

111

The translation of St. Faith, together with Caprasius, Felicianus and Primus, is occasioned by a more positive historical revolution: the conversion of Aquitaine to Christianity: And whan þese four þus heuedyd were, The cursyd paynyms ful cruelly In þe felde her bodyes left þere For to be deuourryd, ful vnpytously, Of bestys; but whan nyht cam, priualy Crystyn men dedyn alle here dylygence Them to beryin with greth reuerence. Nertheles but simple was þe place Ful meny yerys where þei dede lye, Wherfore whan sesyde þorgh goddys grace Was in þat cuntre al paynymry, And cryst hys Feyth dede claryfye, A bysshope was styryd of deuocyoun Of þem to makyn a translacyoun (Serjeantson 1938: 3979-92).

The link between textual and reliquary translation emerges most clearly by far in Bokenham’s treatment of the translation of St. Margaret,19 and especially in the Arundel version of the text, where clear parallels can be drawn between Bokenham’s self-dramatisation of his own activities as translator of Margaret’s life and his depiction of Austin, the monastic translator of the saint’s relics. The verbal echoes and parallels between Bokenham’s presentation of himself as an “austin frere” and the figure of Austin, abbot of “a solemne of munkys” (Serʁeantson 1938: 32; 981-7) are surely not meant to go unnoticed. Both Austin and Bokenham fall victim to “tyranny.” Bokenham the pilgrim is saved from “a cruel tyraunth […] and five mo men” thanks to the ring with which he touched Margaret’s foot (ibid. 161-2). Austin decides to remove Margaret’s relics from Antioch when that city falls under tyrannous rule (“be tyrannye”) (ibid. 951, 955). Similarly, both Austin and Bokenham sacrifice their physical and mental well-being to their prospective acts of translation. Both are, to some extent, linked back to Margaret by being themselves cast as martyrs. Austin makes a dying speech, defining his own legacy, which has something in common with Margaret’s own dying words: “Allas!” quod he, “euene as a straunger And as vnknowyn also in this cuntre, Ineuytabylly I must deyin her, For alwey encrecyth myn infyrmyte. Nerthees, vertu of necessyte I wyl make, and therefore now

112

Part Five To god my soule I commende & to yow. More-ouyr also, I wil ye wete Two precious relykyys I her haue wyth me; That is to seyne, of seynte Margrete The body, and of the vyrgyne fre, Euprepye, the heed, in a cophyn of tre, Wyche from Antyoche I haue brouth And to Pauye them led it was my thouth. But syth I see deth me faste nyhe to, And I to lyue may haue no lengere space, Whil my wyttys be fresch & my mynde also, This relyks I yeue to this holy place, You therefore askynge this oonly grace, That ye for me wil preyn specially, And therto my annyuersarye kepyn yerly” (ibid. 1121-41).

Various elements of this speech recall Bokenham’s description of his own condition in the interlude which divides the saint’s life from the section on the translation of her relics in the Arundel MS, wherein Bokenham asks Burgh for a brief break from his work. Like Austin, Bokenham presents himself as a weary traveller, expressing anxiety as to his own mental capacities (his “wyttys”) and foregrounding his own physical decline, even hinting that his labours of translation might cost him his life: Euene as a pilgrim so fare now y. That feyntly walkyth be the weye, And neyther yst to iape ner pleye […] Ryht so, as I seyde, it faryth be me; For sykyr myn handys gynne to feynte, My wyt to ullyn and myn eyne bleynte Shuld be, ner helpe of a spectacle; My penne also gynnyth make obstacle, And lyst no lengere on paper to renne, For I so ofte haue maad to grenne Hys snowte vp-on my thombys ende, That he ful ny is waxyn unthende; For euere as he goth he doth blot, And in my book makyth many a spot, Manyng therby that for the beste, Were for vs bothe a whyle to reste, Til that my wyt and also he Myht be sum craft reparyd be, Wherfore, sone of your ientylnesse, Respyht vs bothyn tyl myhelmesse (ibid. 881-908).

Translating Corpses and Corpora

113

In this passage, Bokenham’s very self seems to undergo a process of fragmentation, his wits wandering off in one direction, his hand in another, and his pen, which is cast as a stubbornly autonomous, snouted creature refusing to cooperate with either. Through this fragmentation, Bokenham as textual translator is also linked with Saint Margaret, whose body parts are treated with what Delany amusingly terms “a somewhat cavalier attitude”, with a rib being offered to hallow a church and a foot somehow making its way to Reading (Delany 1998: 81). In the life of Saint Faith, translation again represents an occasion to introduce monastic figures into the story, as her new resting place becomes the site of “a mynystir of munkys blak” (Serʁeantson 1938: 4018). Bokenham’s closing prayer to the saint, in which he refers to himself as a “translatour” again foregrounds the verbal parallel between his role and that of the bishop Dulcidius, translator of her relics: And specyaly, lady, for þi passyoun, Shere hem þe grace of singulere fauour Wych in-to ynglyssh of pure deuocyoun Of þI legend was þe translatour. Graunth hym, lady, in hys last our Of lyuyng, so to be clensyd fro synne Wych on þi day to lyuyn fyrst dyde begyn (ibid. 4028-34; Abbotsford 202r).

The translator is here again identified with the saint, both through his date of birth and through his suffering and apparently imminent demise. The Abbotsford account of the finding (or “invention”) and translation of St. Stephen survives only as a fragment.20 Notwithstanding this, Bokenham’s repeated coupling of the Latinate “invencioun” with the Germanic “fyndynge” here is perhaps telling. The term “inventio,” of course, also refers to poetic invention – to the process of “finding” suitable rhetorical figures for a composition. Of course, the use of such a term in vernacular hagiography is not unusual: the author of the Gilte Legende gives the same translation for the passage (Hamer 2007: II, 532-7). However, considering Bokenham’s deliberate exploitation of the double meaning of “translation,” I would not deem it over-speculative to posit a similar reading for this terminological choice. Bokenham also inserts accounts of the translation of two native saints: Saint Thomas of Canterbury (fol. 128) and Audrey (fol. 119v-120r). In both cases, the translation episode again serves to foreground monastic agency and thus indirectly to cast the text’s translator as a protagonist in the hagiographical narrative. In the translation section of the life of Saint

114

Part Five

Audrey two monks are sent off to look for a fitting tomb-stone for Audrey, which they find as if by a miracle: For which entent of hir monastery To diuers brethren she yafe in charge In as moche as in the yle therby Ner nere aboute grew no stones large That they anoon shuld taken hir barge And ferther of goon into the cuntee Such a stoon to sekyn as convenient might be (fol. 119v).

Although the Abbess Sexburger takes the lead in presiding over the translation, the masculine, monastic authority of the Abbot Wilfrid is essential in authenticating the miracle of Audrey’s incorrupt corpse: Amonge which of moste auctorite And right sufficient witnesse forto bere Was blissid Wilfrid which had be Hir confessour biforn ful many a yere (ibid.).

Bokenham’s envoy, in which he specifically refers to himself as Audrey’s translator, reinforces the connection between himself and the monastic protagonists of her translation: […]21 seynt Audree for the grete grace Which thou receiveddest of god in this life mortal Purchace thi servauntis in this worldis space Pardon of her synnes both grete and small And too the translatour gete in especial Of thy life into englissh aftir his kunnyng Aftir this outlawry in heven a wonnyng (fol. 120r).

PART SIX TEXTUAL SPACES: NUMBER, FORM AND THE TRINITY

The spiritual pregnancy of geographical location, which has been my focus thus far in this chapter, has notable implications for textual form. The physical world is spiritually significant inasmuch as it reflects the divine essence of its Creator. It is the book of nature, written by the hand of God. The divine schemata which can be seen in the created world can be mirrored, in turn, by human creators, made in the image of God. In other words, to order a textual space is to reflect the divine order which underlies creation itself. I already made some reference to the central importance of the Trinity to Bokenham’s thought in the second chapter of the present study. To this, I would add that Bokenham’s vitae include a remarkable number of expositions on this theme, which are perhaps to some extent intended to draw readers’ attention to the tripartite structures which abound in the narratives. To give just two examples, the Arundel “Prolocutory” into the life of Mary Magdalen contains a lengthy prayer to the Trinity, in which he presents the three epochs of the world – the Garden of Eden, the Fall and the Resurrection – and the three operations of the soul – “Mynd, Resoun >and@ Wyl” (Serjeantson 1938: 5166). The Trinity is also of central importance in the life of St. Barbara. Barbara’s first letter from Origen is an exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity (fol. 7r). In response to this, Barbara has three windows built in the tower to which she is confined by her father (fol. 9r). When her father questions her, she herself delivers a long sermon on the paradoxical oneness of the Trinity (“Indivisibly divisible / And divisibly indivisible” (fol. 9v). Here again, Bokenham displays far less conservative tendencies than he has previously been given credit for. As Winstead points out, with reference to Capgrave, a discussion of the Trinity in the vernacular in the fifteenth century was not something to be undertaken lightly. As early as the thirteenth century, Voragine, an archbishop preaching in Latin, already presents the topic as “well-nigh unapproachable:”

116

Part Six No subject is more elevated, or more fraught with danger than to speak of the most profound Mystery of the Trinity >…@. Let us, therefore, speak of open and lowly subjects, and leave lofty concerns to wise men (Winstead 2007: 63).

As a further preliminary, it is worth noting that Bokenham’s chosen source texts, the Legenda Aurea and the Polychronicon, are replete with numerical schemata and symbolism. Bokenham’s selection of these works as his primary sources (even taking into account the obvious factor of patronal pressures) is therefore in itself indicative of the primacy of number to his literary project. To provide just one further example for illustrative purposes, in Voragine’s account of the conversion of St. Paul multiple tripartite structures are embedded within one another in an elaborate, Russian doll type structure. Voragine begins by telling us that St. Paul was converted within a year of Christ’s crucifixion, about six months after the stoning of St. Stephen. The episode to be described is thus immediately framed within a three-part sequence: Conversio sancti Pauli apostolic facta est eodem anno, quo Christus passus est et Stephanus lapidatus anno non naturali, sed emergenti; nam Christus VIII cal. Aprilis passus est, Stephanus eodem anno III die Augusti lapidatus est, Paulus vero VIII cal. Februarii conversus est (Graesse 1890 : 133). The holy and blissid apostle seynt Poule was convertid to the feith within xii monthys aftir cristis passion ffor crist suffrid the eight kalend of Aprill and Stephyn the thrid day of August aftir and paule the eight kalend of februarie next folowyng (fol. 49r).22

He then goes on to give three reasons (“triplex ratio” / “thre causis”) why Paul’s conversion is celebrated rather than that of any other saint: Quare autem conversio eʁus potius quam aliorum sanctorum celebratur, triplex ratio solet assignari. Primo propter exemplum, ut nullus quantumcunque peccator desperet de venia, quando tantum in culpa postmodum conspicit fuisse in gratia; secundo propter gaudium, sicut enim ecclesia magnam tristitiam habuit in eʁus persecutione, ita maximam laetitiam recepit in eʁus conversione; tertio propter miraculum, quod scilicet dominus ei ostendit, dum de saevissimo persecutore fecit fidelissimum praedicatorem (Graesse 1890: 133). And why the conversion of Seynt Poule is rather solempnysed in holy chirch than the conversion of other seyntis Iannence assigneth thre causis.

Textual Spaces: Number, Form and the Trinity

117

The first quoth he wherof is for example that no man be nevir so grete a sinner shuld dispeyren of forifnesse seeyng hym which was first so excessively grete in synne aftirward to ben so copious in grace. The secunde cause as seith myn auctour was ioye ffor liche as the churche of criste had grete trouble biforn and hevynesse in his persecucion right so it hath now grete ioye and gladnesse in holy conuersyon. The third cause aftir the seid clerc was myracle the which our lorde shewid whan of so wode and cruel a persecutor he made so gode and so faithful a prechour (fol. 49r).

At this point, Bokenham diverges from his source, interpolating a narrative summary of Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus and his subsequent healing by Ananias, as described in Acts: 3-19. This narrative interpolation can be seen as characteristic of Bokenham’s treatment of his source text in Voragine, inasmuch as it serves to dramatise Paul and Ananias as credible human agents, stressing their imitable human virtues and common human fears and vices – i.e. their exemplarity and membership of the communio sanctorum. In the remainder of the text, Bokenham follows Voragine in detailing the three reasons why Paul’s conversion is to be deemed miraculous: Christ the miracle-worker, as “ratione efficientis,”23 the blinding light, as “ratione disponentis” and Paul himself as “ratione patientis” (Graesse 1890: 133-4). In all three of these sections, Bokenham’s translations bring the tripartite structures present in his source text to the fore. In the first, Voragine gives three reasons why Christ’s agency was miraculous: Ratione efficientis, id est Christi, qui eum convertit: ibi enim ostendit suam mirabilem potentiam in hoc quod dixit: durum est tibi contra stimulum recalcitrare, et in hoc quod ipsum tam subito immutavit, unde continuo immutatus respondit: domine quid vis me facere? >… @ Secundo ibi ostendit ejus mirabilem sapientiam, mirabilis enim sapientia fuit in hoc, quia ipsum a tumour superbiae dejecit offerendo infima humilitatis non sublimia majestatis >… @. Tertio ibi ostendit suam mirabilem clementiam, quod notatur ex hoc, quod ipsum exsistentem in actu et voluntate persequendi convertit (Graesse 1890: 133-4). [Miraculous, first, because the one who converted him was Christ, who showed his marvellous power in what he said: “It is hard for you to kick against the goad,” and in changing Paul so suddenly that, once changed, he replied: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” >… @ Christ also showed his wondrous wisdom, in that he cured Paul of the tumour of pride, offering him the depths of humility, not the heights of majesty >… @ Moreover, he showed his wondrous forbearance, since he converted Paul at the very

118

Part Six moment when Paul, in act and intention, was persecuting the Christians (Granger Ryan 1993: 119).

Bokenham prefaces his translation of this passage with a sentence introducing this triad of qualities (power, wisdom and humility) in such a way as to foreground their threefold nature: And first as touching this conuersion we mow marken in criste thre thyngis as his myght his witte and his buxomnesse (fol. 49v).

Voragine’s description of the “ratione disponenis” lists three disposing means which respond to three vices: Secundo fuit miraculosa ratione disponentis, id est lucis, quae ipsum ad conversionem disposuit: ipsa enim lux dicitur fuisse subita, immense et coelica; et subito, inquit, circumfulsit eum lux de coelo. Paulus enim tria vitia in se habebat, primum erat audacia, quod notatur in hoc quod dicitur: accessit ad principes sacerdotum etc. Glossa: non vocatus, sed sponte zelo concitante eum. Secundum erat superbia, quod notatur in hoc, quod dicitur spirans minarum etc. Tertium erat carnalis intelligentia, quam scilicet in lege habebat. Unde Glossa super illud: ego sum Jesus etc. Ego Deus coelestis loquor, quem mortuum putas sensu judaico. Ipsa igitur lux divina fuit subita, ut audacem terreret, immensa, ut sublimem et superbum in ima humilitatis prosterneret, fuit coelica, ut carnalem ejus intelligentiam in coelestem mutaret (Graesse 1890: 134). >Second, the conversion was miraculous because of the means used to dispose the one to be converted, namely, the light that made Paul ready for conversion. That light is said to have been sudden, immense and heavensent: “And suddenly a light from heaven shone around him.” Paul had three vices, the first being wanton boldness, which he demonstrated by going to the high priests: “He was not summoned,” says the Gloss, “but went on an impulse, driven by his zeal.” His second vice was insolent pride, because he is said to have breathed out threats of violence against the disciples of the Lord. The third was that he understood the Law according to the flesh; so the Gloss, commenting on the words “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting,” says: “It is I, God of heaven, speaking, whom you, with your Jewish way of judging things, think of as being dead.” Therefore the divine light was sudden, in order to frighten the bold one, and immense, to bring the haughty, overbearing one down to lowly humility, and heavenly, to change his fleshly understanding and make it heavenly@ (Granger Ryan 1993: 28).

Bokenham gives a briefer, simplified version of this passage, which is so structured as to bring to the fore the balance between these two triads:

Textual Spaces: Number, Form and the Trinity

119

Moreovir we may noten in this light thre thyngis that it was sodeyn grete and hevenly ageyns thre vices which saulus had in hym as boldenesse or folehardynesse pride and fleshly vndirstondyng of the lawe. His pride made hym to conspiren inward thretys ageyn cristis disciplis. His folehardyneswse made hym bolde to goon to the princes of the prestis to getyn hym auctorite forto purssuen cristis disciplis and to hunten hem and bothe these two vices were caused of the third that is to seyn of the carnel undirstondyng of holy scripture. The light than that appierid was grete to appresse with the gretenesse of his pride >…@. It was sodeyn to depresse the haste of his folehardynesse. And it was hevenly to chaungen his carnal vndirstondyng into gostely (fol. 49v).

The description of the “ratione patientis” is again tripartite, referring to the three things which happen to Paul during the three days following his experience on the road to Damascus (prostration, blindness and abstinence from food and drink). To this Bokenham adds, following 2 Corinthians 12: 2-4, And this was in the seid thre daies whan he was ravisshid vp into the thrid heven and herd there privey mysteries the which it is nat leeful a man to speken a he seith hym self in a nothir place (fol. 49v).

This reference to Paul’s trip to the third heaven adds yet another Trinitarian echo to the passage. Both Voragine and Bokenham conclude by presenting three points of contrast between Paul and Adam: Vel ista tria dicuntur fuisse in eo contra tria, quae fuerunt in primo parente. In ipso enim fuit contra Deum erectio et e contra in Paulo ad terram prostratio, in ipso oculorum apertio et a contra in Paulo oculorum obcaecatio, in ipso enim fuit manducatio cibi vetiti et e contra in Paulo abstinentia cibi liciti (Graesse 1890: 135). Thre thyngis commendable weren in poule ayens thre thyngis vituperale in our forme fadir Adam. The prostracioun to the erthe of poule is ageyns the ereccion of god ageyns god >sic@. The blyndenesse of poule in which he sey inwardly hevenly privite was contrarie to the opening of Adams eyne outewardly to concupiscence of worldly vanyte. In poule the abstinence of mete which was leeful and puryfyed may be sett ageyns Adams etyng of that was unleeful and defendid (fol. 49v).

I have already illustrated how Bokenham tends to accentuate numerical symbolism when translating Voragine’s etymological prologues (cf. pp. 34-53 above). Significantly, his hagiographical narratives also abound in tripartite structures. Most, obviously, the Arundel version of the life of Mary Magdalen is divided into three clear sections: “Prolocutory,”

120

Part Six

prologue and vita. Similarly, the Arundel life of St. Margaret is divided into prologue, vita and translation. The Life of St. Audrey is divided into three sections clearly signalled by authorial interpolations: the vita, the translation of the relics and post-mortem miracles (fols. 117-20). Elsewhere, the life of St. Thomas of Canterbury contains the following tantalising reference to another thus-far lost Bokenham text, a more extended life of Becket, the tripartite structure of which is repeatedly underlined (Spencer 2012: 287): Of which hate and dissention how thre thyngis were the first originall cause and what thise thre thyngis weren of the parleamentis also of charyngdon and northampton and what was doon there and of blissid thomis troubelous exile vii yere in fraunce and of his grievous persecucion in the mean tyme forasmoche as the matier is longe and diffuse and may nat be declared ner tolde shortely I oversitt it in this werk and wil oonly declaren the processe and circumstaunce of his passion which was the fine and ende of his longe persecution. And who so wil han notes and knowleche of these seid my boke which I compiled and translated oute of latyn into englissh of seynt Thomas life in especial which is distinct into thre parties and the parties into chapitres he shal mown fynde bothe that is seid and that eke which is left diffusely and plenerly aftir the sympilnesse of my rude witte tolde and declared (Abbotsford fol. 23v).

CONCLUSION

Bokenham is an author who, throughout his oeuvre, never tires of stressing his own marginality, historically (as the belated, inferior son of greater poets) and geographically (as an Englishmen writing in the vernacular). Notwithstanding this, as I have sought to demonstrate in the present study, he negotiates with the very spatial and temporal perspectives which would seem to isolate him in such a way as to lay claim to an authentic and broad-reaching authority for his own poetic voice. Throughout his oeuvre, Bokenham counters the patriarchal hegemonies of literary and political history by asserting an alternative, spiritually pristine matrilineage, which also serves to legitimise his own feminised vernacular tongue and national identity. Bokenham deploys the motifs of language, lineage and location in such a way that historical, geographical and gender marginality ultimately become grounds for exaltation, due to their deep-rooted spiritual integrity. Yet, beyond this, spatial and historical hierarchies and distinctions are ultimately dissolved through Bokenham’s increasingly daring vision of the inclusiveness of the communio sanctorum – of the continuously and universally binding force of exemplarity. To work on such a huge body of as-yet unedited work by such a (to my mind) significant author as Bokenham has been at once a huge privilege and a somewhat daunting undertaking. This slim volume has, inevitably, represented nothing more than a preliminary and necessarily superficial investigation of the enormously rich material which has recently become available to us. Many of the ideas which I have put forward here will doubtless be expanded upon or corrected in the near future. For my own part, I hope to publish a further study, considering a number of the individual legends in relation to their sources and analogues, within the next year or so.

NOTES

1

The Arundel version reads “Wych in an angle þou founde of oblyuyoun” (Serʁeantson 1938: 4726). 2 On Bokenham’s life of St. Margaret and the tradition of marguerite poetry, cf. Delany 1998: 39, Earl 1972, and pp. 169-181 of my article in Bishop 2010. 3 Cf. for example Brown 1981: 86-105. 4 Much has been written on Dante’s relation to the “bella scola.” Of particular interest from the point of view of the present analysis is Ianucci 1993. 5 Also quoted by Borchardt 1968: 415. 6 Bloch 1983, Borchardt 1968, Rothstein 1990, Schibanoff 1976, Warren 2003, etc. 7 Cf. Rothstein: 332 and Borchardt: 416. 8 These are, in order of appearance: Thomas the Apostle, John the Evangelist, Felix, Agnes, Agatha, Ambrose, James the Less, John the Baptist, Peter the Apostle, Commemoration of St. Paul, Margaret, Mary Magdalen, Laurence, Augustine, Matthew, Michael, Jerome and Luke. 9 Higden’s Latin is as follows: Haec terra, quae nunc Wallia, Quondam est, dicta Cambria, A Cambro Bruti filio, Qui rexit hanc dominio: Sed post est dicta Wallia, A Gwalaes reginula, Regis Ebranci filia, Ad haec nupta confinia (Babington and Lumby 1865-8: I, 396) 10

Quoted and discussed in Delany 1998: 88. I present more or less the same argument in Spencer 2010 (a). 12 Cf. for example, Winstead 2007. 13 As Winstead puts it: 11

Christianity, in Bokenham’s “Barbara,” is an open-minded faith that encourages intellectual curiosity and study, even among women (Winstead 2011: 82). 14

Some preliminary reflections on this theme, with specific reference to the lives of native saints, appear in my article (Spencer 2011). 15 The first stanza of this passage is cited and discussed in Horobin 2007: 938-9. 16 Also briefly discussed in ibid. 239. 17 Also quoted by Delany (Delany 1998: 81).

124 18

Notes

In the Abbotsford MS, 133v, we find sub-headings for “the secunde translacyon” and “the third translacyon” inserted in the scribal hand. 19 I have also presented this argument in Bishop 210: 191-3. 20 Fol. 151v is followed by a missing leaf, with the result that the narrative is interrupted during the account of the final appearance of Gamaliel to Lucian and before the discovery of the relics. 21 Damage to the manuscript makes the beginning of this stanza illegible. 22 I have not provided the modern English translation for this and the following passages because I believe Bokenham’s translation to be sufficiently faithful to the original. For an alternative translation, see Granger Ryan 1993: I 119-21) 23 This reference to Christ as efficient cause or reason is perhaps worth considering in the light of Bokenham’s Aristotelian prologue to the Arundel version of his life of St. Margaret, where he refers to the “auctour” as the efficient cause of a work, subsequently implicitly invoking the notion of duplex causa efficiens, authenticating and authorising his own writings by aligning himself as causa of his own poetic creations with the creative agency of the divine creator (cf. ȳohnson 1994: 105-8; Minnis 1984: Spencer 2010: 193-99).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscripts Advocates Library, Abbotsford MS British Library, Arundel 37 MS

Primary Texts Augustine of Hippo 1866 (a). De Doctrina Christiana. Vienna: CSEL 80. —.1866 (b). De Genesi ad Litteram. Vienna: CSEL 28.1. Babington and Lumby 1865-8. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century. 9 vols. Rolls Series 41. London: Longman. Barnardiston, K.W. 1962. Clare Priory: Seven Centuries of a Suffolk House. Cambridge: Heffer. Clayton, M and Magennis, H. 1994. The Old English Lives of Saint Margaret. Cambridge Studies in Anglo Saxon England 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colgrave, B. et al. 2008. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics. Colgrave, B and Mynors R.A.B. 1969. Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Erbe, T 1905. Mirk’s Festial. Oxford: EETS e.s. 96. Flügel, E. 1905. “Eine Mittelenglische Claudian-Übersetzung (1445).” Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 28 ): 255-99 and 421-38. Graesse, T. 1890. Jacobi a Voragine. Legenda Aurea: Vulgo Historia Lombardica Dicta. Breslau: Koebner. Granger Ryan, W. 1997. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints. 2 vols. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Hamer, R. 2001. Supplementary Lives in some Manuscripts of the Gilte Legende. Oxford: EETS o.s. 315 —. 2007. Gilte Legende. 2 Vols. Oxford: EETS o.s. 327

126

Bibliography

Hill, E. 2002. On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees; Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis; The Literal Meaning of Genesis. The Works of St Augustine: a Translation for the 21st Century, I.13. New York: New York City Press. Horstmann, C. 1893. John Capgrave. The Life of Saint Katherine of Alexandria. Oxford: EETS o.s. 100. —. 1887. “Mappula Angliae von Osbern Bokenham,” Englische Studien 10, 1-34. MacCracken, H.N. 1934. John Lydgate. The Minor Poems Vol.1: Religious Poems. Oxford: EETS e.s.107. Serjeantson, M.S. 1938. Osbern Bokenham. Legendys of Hooly Wummen. Oxford: EETS.o.s.206.

Secondary Texts Ashleigh, K.M. and Sheingorn, P. 1990. Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society. Georgia: University of Georgia Press. Bloch, R.H. 1983. Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. —. 1987. “Medieval Misogyny.” Representations 20, 1-24. Bloom H. 1997. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks. Borchardt, F.L. 1968. “Etymology in Tradition and in the Northern Renaissance.” Journey of the History of Ideas 29:3, 415-29. Bronkhorst, J 2001. Etymology and magic: Yaska's Nirukta, Plato's Cratylus, and the riddle of semantic etymologies. Numen 48, 147-203. Brown, P. 1981 The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity.Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. —. 1998. “Higden’s Britain” in Smyth 1998, 103-18. Chaganti, S. 2008. The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary: Enshrinement, Inscription, Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Clark, R.P. 1976. “Doubting Thomas in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale.” The Chaucer Review 11.2, 164-78. Coletti, T. 2004. Mary Magdalen and the Drama of the Saints: Theater, Gender and Devotion in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Copeland, R. 1991. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Language, Lineage and Location in the Works of Osbern Bokenham

127

Delany, S. 1998. Impolitic bodies: Poetry, saints and society in fifteenthcentury England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Derrida, J. 1974. Of Grammatology. Trans G.C. Spivak. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Dinshaw, C. 1989. Chaucer’s sexual poetics. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Doyle, A.I. 1989. “Publications by Members of the Religious Orders” in Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall, eds. Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375-1475. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Earl J.W. 1972. “Saint Margaret and the Pearl-Maiden.” Modern Philology 70:1. Edwards, A.S.G. 1994. “The Transmission and Audience of Osbern Bokenham’s Legendys of Hooly Wummen.” Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle. Ed. A. Minnis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 157-67. —. 2001. “The Middle English Translation of Claudian’s De Consolatu Stilichonis” in Alistain Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 267-78.. Foxe, J. 1583. The Unabridged Acts and Monuments Online or TAMO (HRI Online Publications, Sheffield, 2011). Available from: http//www.johnfoxe.org [Accessed: 16.10.12]. Galloway, A. 2004. “Latin England” in Imagining a Medieval English Nation. Ed. Kathy Lavezzo. Medieval Cultures 37. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press. 41-93. Gellrich, J.M. 1985. The idea of the book in the Middle Ages: Language, theory, mythology, and fiction. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Gorlach, M. 1998. Studies in Middle English saints' legends. Heidelberg: Winter. Heffernan, T.J. 1992. Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages. New York: Oxford University Press. Hilles, C. 2001. “Gender and politics in Osbern Bokenham’s legendary.” New Medieval Literatures 4: 189-212. Horobin, S. 2005. “The angle of oblivioun: A lost medieval manuscript discovered in Walter Scott’s collection.” Times Literary Supplement 11 November, 12-13. —. 2007. “Politics, patronage, and piety in the works of Osbern Bokenham.” Speculum 82: 132-164.

128

Bibliography

—. 2008. “A Manuscript found in the library of Abbotsford House and the lost legendary of Osbern Bokenham.” English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 14: 132-162. Ianucci, A. 1993. Dante e la “bella scola” della poesia: autorità e sfida poetica. Ravenna: Longo. Jones, M.K. 1989. “Somerset, York and the Wars of the Roses.” The English Historical Review CCCXI, 285-307. Lavezzo, K. 2006. Angels on the Edge of the World: the Geography of English Identity from Aelfric to Chaucer. New York: Cornell University Press. —. 2004. Imagining a Medieval English Nation. Medieval Cultures 37. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press. Lawton, D. 1987. “Dullness and the fifteenth century”. ELH 54.4: 761-99. Middleton, A. 1978. “The idea of public poetry in the reign of Richard II.” Speculum 53.1. Price, P. 2001. “Trumping Chaucer: Osbern Bokenham’s Katherine.” The Chaucer Review 36.2: 158-83. Rothstein, M. 1990. “Etymology, Genealogy and the Immutability of Origins.” Renaissance Quarterly 43:2, 332-47. Sanok, C. 2007. Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints’ Lives in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schibanoff, S 1976. “Argus and Argyve: Etymology and Characterization in Chaucer’s Troilus.” Speculum 51:4, 647-58. Smyth, A.P. 1998. Medieval Europeans: Studies in Ethnic Identity and National Perspectives in Medieval Europe. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Spencer, A. 2007 . Dialogues of Love and Government: a Study of the Erotic Dialogue Form in some Texts from the Courtly Love Tradition. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. —. 2010 (a) “Etymology, Genealogy and Hagiographical Auctoritas in the Works of Osbern Bokenham: Redeeming the Public Voice of English Poetry” in Nicholas Brownlees, Gabriella de Lungo and John Denton, eds. The Language of Public and Private Communication in a Historical Perspective. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 323-43. —. 2010 (b) “Osbern Bokenham Reads the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women: the Life of Saint Margaret” in Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master?: Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 160-203.

Language, Lineage and Location in the Works of Osbern Bokenham

129

—. 2011. ““By Auctorite of Experyence:” the Role of Topography in Osbern Bokenham’s Lives of Native Saints” in Lukas Erne and Guillemette Bolens, eds. –Medieval and Early Modern Authorship. Spell 25. Tübingen: Narr, 277-92. Winstead, K. 2007. Virgin martyrs: Legends of sainthood in late medieval England. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. —. 2011. “Osbern Bokenham’s “Englische boke”: Re-forming Holy Women” in Shannon Gayk and Kathleen Tonry, eds. Form and Reform: Reading Across the Fifteenth Century. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn et al. 1999. The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280-1520. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.

INDEX

Agatha, Saint 6, 9, 39, 68, 122N. Agnes, Saint 6, 11, 15-16, 3, 39, 44, 51, 122N. Ambrose 15-16, 39, 67, 122N. Anne, Saint 5, 9, 39, 65-6, 70-1, 74-7, 89. Apollonia, Saint 87-8. Felix of Dunwich, Saint 38-9. Audrey, Saint 12, 23, 57, 67, 70, 967, 101, 106, 113-4, 120. Augustine, Saint (of Hippo) 23, 335, 38, 39, 45-6, 51, 54, 67, 73, 123N. Barbara, Saint 24, 68, 88, 115, 123N. Bloch, Howard 34, 37, 46, 86, 103, 123N. Brown, Peter 58, 95, 109, 123N. Brittany 99-100. Brute, Walter 101-2. Capgrave, John 4, 38, 88, 116-7. Cecilia, Saint 9, 22, 38, 39, 87. Cecily Neville 7, 10, 80-1. Chaucer, Geoffrey 9-11, 19-20, 3238, 55, 66, 83, 95, 101, 103. Christina, Saint 9, 17. Clare Priory 4, 5, 6, 21-2, 39, 57, 66, 73, 95, 105, 107. Clare, Saint 38-9. David, Saint 13. Delany, Sheila 4-7 passim, 11, 31, 33, 45, 57, 68-9, 70, 73, 74-5, 76-7, 97-9, 100, 113, 123N. Derrida, Jacques 10, 29-30. Dunstan, Saint 70, 73-4. Exemplarity 22-4, 117, 121. Faith, Saint 4, 97-9, 111, 113. Felix, Saint 39-40, 123N. France 95, 97-9, 102.

Galloway, Andrew 103. Gellrich, Jesse 93. Gower, John 9, 10-11, 19-20. 32-3, 55, 66, 83, 95. Gregory the Great, Saint 16-17, 39, 42. Guérande, Treaty of (1381) 99. Higden, Ranulph .5, 12, 16, 37, 556, 58-9, 95, 101, 103, 123N. Hilles, Carroll 7, 17, 20, 61, 72, 74, 79-80. Horobin, Simon 3, 5, 7, 9-10, 12, 16, 23, 24, 38, 72, 77, 105, 123N. Italy 95, 97, 100, 102, 104. Joan of Acre 22, 101, 107. Kempe, Margery 5-6, 87, 90. Katherine of Alexandria, Saint 6, 9, 39, 87, 88. Laurence, Saint 12, 100, 105-6, 123N. Lavezzo, Kathy 16-17, 95, 101-2. 103-4. Lucy, Saint 9, 39. Lydgate, John 9, 10-11, 19-20, 323, 38, 55, 66, 95. Margaret, Saint 3, 4, 5, 9, 15, 1718, 19, 21, 30-1, 32, 38, 40, 468, 69, 74, 84-5, 100, 104, 10910, 111-3, 120, 123N, 124N. Marguerite poetry 123N. Mary Magdalen, Saint 6, 9, 39, 42, 52-4, 66, 74, 85-6, 87, 89, 115, 119-20, 123N. Mary, mother of Jesus, Saint 5, 70,72-3, 74-5, 77. Monica, Saint 73.

132 Native saints 5, 19, 38, 55-8, 69-70, 99-100, 101, 106-7, 113-4, 123N. Nicholas of Tolentino, Saint 12, 74, 77, 100, 105. Number Symbolism (cf. also “Trinity”) 10, 45-9, 56, 72, 93, 116, 119-20. Origen 88, 115. Paul the Apostle, Saint 32-3, 39, 83-4, 116-9, 123N. Paul the Hermit, Saint 11. Paula, Saint 73. Pecock, Reginald 61-2. Reames, Sherry L. 23. Richard of York 5, 6-7, 66, 79-80, 97-9.

Index Sanok, Catherine 22, 109. Scott, Sir Walter 3. Thomas the Apostle, Saint 39, 40-5, 123N. Thomas of Canterbury, Saint 5, 56, 71-2, 73-4, 96, 101, 113, 120. Trinity (cf. also “Number Symbolism”) 34, 37-53, 68-9, 71, 115-20. Ursula, Saint 99-100. Vincent, Saint 21-2, 68. Winifred, Saint 13, 57-9, 69-70, 72, 95, 106-7. Winstead, Karen A. 4, 6, 12, 23, 24, 61-2, 86-7, 88-9, 115-6, 123N.