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The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Michael G. Sargent
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Extract

From its foundation the Carthusian Order cultivated letters as the most fitting form of labour for those who dwell apart in the desert; for although they lived and worked in strict solitude, they still spoke to the Christian world through the books which they wrote, copied and transmitted. Adam of Dryburgh (†1212 at Witham), one of the first and best-known English Carthusian authors, wrote of this activity in his work On the Quadripartite Exercise of the Cell, recalling a passage of the Consuetudines of Guigo 1 which is often cited as evidence of the Carthusian attitude to letters:

‘If the prior has so provided, there is one work to the performance of which you ought especially to attend; that is either that you learn to write (if, of course, you can learn), or if you can and know, that you do write. This work is, as it were, immortal work; work, if one may say so, not passing but lasting; work certainly, may we say, and yet not work; the work, finally, which, among all other works is most fitting to literate religious men …

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 225 note 2 Adam of Dryburgh, De Quadripartito Exercitio Cellae, ascribed to Guigo II in P.L., cliii. 787–884. E. Margaret Thompson first noticed the ascription to Adam in MS. Cotton Vespasian D. ix, in The Somerset Carthusians, London 1896, 74Google Scholar; but it was not until 1930 that this ascription was connected with the work published in P.L.: Thompson, E. Margaret, The Carthusian Order in England, London 1930, 335338 and 354–367Google Scholar; and Wilmart, Dom André, ‘Magister Adam Carthusiensis’, Mélanges Mandonnet, Paris 1930, ii. 145167Google Scholar. Cf. also Wilmart, , Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen age latin. Paris 1932, 240248Google Scholar. Richard Bruce Marks cites this passage of the Quadripartite Exercise in The Medieval Manuscript library of the Charterhouse of St. Barbara in Cologne (Analecta Cartusiana xxi, xxii), Salzburg 1974, i.38, correctly attributing the work to Adam of Dryburgh, but mistakenly giving the title of the work as the Consuetudines. The cited passage is from chapter xxxvi: P.L., cliii. 881C-883B-C.

page 225 note 3 Guigo 1, Consuetudines: P.L., cliii. 631–760. The citations are from chapter xxviii 2–4 (693–695). Cf. E. Margaret Thompson, Carthusian Order, 335; R. B. Marks, op. cit., i.v; and P. Lehmann, ‘Bücherliege und Bücherpflege bei den Karthäusern’, Miscellanea Francesco Ehrle, v., Scritti di storia e paleografia, Rome 1924, 368, 369.

page 226 note 1 ‘Quoniam difficillimum est ad correctionem librorum iuxta statutorum nostrorum tenorem per totum ordinem faciendam haberi posse exemplaria domus Cartusie originalia’, from Lehmann, op. cit., 374. Lehmann published a list of MSS. of this work known to him, and sections of the text. Other treatments of the text occur in Ker, N. R., English Manuscripts in the Century after the Norman Conquest, Oxford 1960, 58Google Scholar; and Georg Paul Kölner, ‘Die Opus-Pacis-Handschrift im Lectionarium des ehemaligen Benedictinerklosters St. Jakob vor den Mauern von Mainz’, in Universitas: Dienst an Wahrheit und Leben: Festschrift für Bischoff Dr. Albert Stohr, Mainz 1960, ii. 258273Google Scholar. Other MSS. are mentioned in Lehmann, P., Ruf, P. et al., Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, Munich 1918, iiGoogle Scholar. (Mainz-Erfurt, number 14: Kartäuse Salvatorberg) 239, 478; item M 26 (MS. Weimar qu. 22) and Glorieux, P., ‘Gerson et les chartreux’, Recherches de théologie ancienne el médiévale XXVIII (1961), 139Google Scholar (MS. Grenoble 421).

page 227 note 1 Marks, op. cit.; Hendrickx, , ‘De Handschriften van de Kartuis Genadendal bij Brugge (1318–1580)’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, XLVII (1973), 363, 241–290Google Scholar; xlviii (1974), 143–169. Margaret Thompson, Carthusian Order, 313, points out that the English priors were informed in 1478 of the ordinance to keep registers of all books belonging to each house (MS. Rawlinson D. 318, fol. 87), but that ‘not-one such register is now available’.

page 227 note 2 Ibid., 313–334. Colledge, E. suggested, ‘The Treatise of Perfection the Sons of God: a fifteenth-century English Ruysbroeck translation’, English Studies, XXXIII (1952), 57Google Scholar, that the book-list in MS. Sloane 3548, fol. 158, published by Miss Ramona Bressie, Modem Language Notes, April 1939, 246–256, may also have been a Carthusian collection.

page 227 note 3 Colledge, op. cit., 49–66.

page 227 note 4 Desoer, G. B., ‘The Relationship of the Latin Versions of Ruysbroeck's “Die Geestelike Brulocht” to “The Chastising of God's Children”’, Mediaeval Studies, XXI (1959), 129145CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 228 note 5 Bazire, Joyce and Colledge, E., The Chastising of God's Children and The Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, Oxford 1957Google Scholar. The intention of the editors in this joint edition of the two works was ‘to include in one volume the only two known Middle English translations of works by Ruysbroek’ (op. cit., viii): Dr. A. I. Doyle has since published ‘A Text Attributed to Ruusbroec Circulating in England’, Dr. L. Reypens-Album, Antwerp 1964, 153161Google Scholar. However, as Dr. Doyle points out, the work is more commonly attributed to others than to Ruysbroeck: the attribution, which he terms ‘very dubious’, is found only in a Middle Dutch MS., Brussels Bib. Roy. MS. 2905–2909.

page 228 note 1 Hope Emily Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for his Biography, Modern Language Association 1937, 43–45, describes this MS., but passes over the Calculus: ‘The rest of the volume is taken up with the Latin translation by Thomas Fishlawe of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection’. I owe my knowledge of this text to some notes made on the MS. by Mr. G. B. Desoer.

page 228 note 2 I have compiled a list of the major textual variations, which I hope shortly to be able to publish.

page 228 note 3 MS. Cambridge, University Library Hh. I. 12, an anthology of ascetic materials of unknown provenance, but textually related to MSS. Heneage 3084 and Ashmole 1286, contains, fols. 81–96, chapters 10–14 of the Middle English Stimulus, to which the Hilton ascription serves as an introduction.

page 228 note 4 Russell-Smith, Joy, ‘Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Images’, Dominican Studies, VII (1954), 203, n. 87Google Scholar; cf. also Kane, Harold J., ‘A Critical Edition of the “Prickynge of Love”’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Language and Literature, 1968, xxvxxviGoogle Scholar.

page 229 note 1 Cf. my ‘A New Manuscript of The Chastising of God's Children with an Ascription to Walter Hilton’, Medium AEvum, at press.

page 229 note 2 ‘Priori domus sancte anne prope conuentre non fit misericordia. Et dominus Jacobus grenehalg, ibidem hospes, maneat ibi ad ordinis voluntatem (prout petit conuentus de shene); nec per quoscumque visitatores remittatur ad domum professionis sue. Et si placuerit priori & conuentui faciat ibi professionem, vel alibi vbi beniuolos reperire poterit receptores’: St. Hugh's Charterhouse, Parkminster, MS. B.62, fol. 88r: cited in James Walsh and Edmund Colledge, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ and ‘The Mirror of Simple Souls’ in the Latin Glossed Translations by Richard Methley of Mount Grace Charterhouse (Archivio italiano per la storia della pietá), at press.

page 229 note 3 According to St. Hugh's Parkminster, MS.B. 77, an obit-list of English Carthusians compiled from MS. sources by Dom Palémon Bastin.

page 230 note 1 The greater part of the documentation toward an edition of the Viae Sion Lugent was prepared, some years ago, by Rev. Pierre Dubourg; the work thence passed to Dom Anselm Stoelen, author of the article ‘Hugues de Balma’ in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité. I am informed by Fr. Colledge that the material is currently under review by Francis Ruello and Jeanne Barbet, who may be able to produce an edition in Sources Chreétiennes.

page 230 note 2 Allen, Writings Ascribed, 37–39, contains no mention of the Viae Sion Lugent.

page 230 note 3 Douce MS. 262, fols. 119–128.

page 230 note 4 Hodgson, Phyllis, The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling, E.E.T.S., o.s. 218 (1944), xvxviGoogle Scholar; and Ker, N. R., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: a List of Surviving Books, 2nd ed. London 1964, 122, 178Google Scholar.

page 230 note 5 Jolliffe, P. S., ‘Two Middle English Tracts on the Contemplative Life’, Mediaeval Studies, XXXVII (1975), 85121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 230 note 6 Elizabeth Salter, Nicholas Love's ‘Myrrour of the Blessed Lyf of Jesu Christ’ (Analecta Cartusiana x), Salzburg 1974; originally presented as a University of London M.A. thesis, 1949.Google Scholar

page 231 note 1 MSS. Glasgow University, Gen. 1130, and the MSS. of the Mirror belonging to the Leeds Diocesan Archives and to Mr. Colin Franklin, Culham, Oxford.

page 231 note 2 G. Schleich, ‘Über die Entstehungszeit und den Verfasser der mittelenglischen Bearbeitung von Susos Horologium’, Archiv, clxii (n.s. lvii), 26–34.

page 231 note 3 Allen, Writings Ascribed, 534: ‘Preterea quoad hoc quod dixisti de prefato venerabili Ricardo, cuius memoria in benediccione est, videlicet, quod fuit materia quasi ruine et decepcionis, quia, vt tibi videbatur, fecit homines iudices sui, et quod tu non nosti tot homines in libris eius profecisse, quot in eis miserabiliter decepti sunt’.

page 231 note 4 Ibid., 380–323.

page 231 note 5 Ibid., 45: ‘They suggest the method of the author of a longer compilation which exists in several copies of interesting provenance’, is Miss Allen's comment on the Heneage 3083 compilation. Ibid., 216–217, on the B.M. Add. 24661 text of the Incendium Amoris.

page 232 note 1 Ibid., 219–221, numbers xxix, xxxiii and xxxviii.

page 232 note 2 Rather than Commentary on the Canticles, a title which reflects neither the content of the work (which deals only with the first two verses), nor the MS. titles: cf. Writings Ascribed, 62–63. Cf. also the title, ‘Le Commentaire de Richard Rolle sur les premiers versets du Cantique des Cantiques’, Madon, O., Mélanges de Science Religieuse, II (1950), 313325Google Scholar. I was not aware of this article until September 1975, when Fr. E. Colledge and I found it among the Hope Emily Allen papers on deposit in the Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. Our thanks are due to Mrs. A. C. Baugh, without whose care these valuable materials might have been lost, and to the Librarian and the Archivist of the Canaday Library.

page 232 note 3 Allen, Writings Ascribed, 218–222, numbers xxv, xxviii, xxxvi and xlii. Although the illustrations of the Lincoln Cathedral MS. portray clerics in habits of a variety of colours, the prominent illustrations in the Rolle section of the MS (fol. 89, at the beginning of Vehiculum Vitae—an alternative title for the Emendatio Vitae; fol. 101, at the beginning of the Incendium; and fol. 120, at the end of the Oleum effusum) are all in white habits that seem to be Carmelite, and not Carthusian.

page 232 note 4 Allen, Hope Emily, ‘Some Fourteenth Century Borrowings from Ancren Riwle’, Modem Language Review, XVIII (1923), 18Google Scholar. Cf. Bazire and Colledge, op. cit., 41–46, 259–263.

page 232 note 5 ‘A Source of the Poor Caitiff Tract “Of Man's Will”’, a note which I hope to publish shortly.

page 233 note 1 M. Deanesly, ‘The Incendium Amoris of Rolle, Richard and Bonaventura', S., English Historical Review, XXIX (1914), 99101Google Scholar; re-published in The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle. of Hampole, Manchester 1915, 89, 52–53Google Scholar.

page 233 note 2 Allen, Writings Ascribed, 214n.

page 234 note 1 Rosenbach Foundation Museum and Library, Philadelphia, printed book H 491. The first printed reference to this book, or to Grenehalgh, seems to have been by Furnivall, Notes and Queries, Seventh series, xii. 145 (August 1891), according to a note in the papers of Hope Emily Allen.

page 234 note 2 Doyle, A. I., ‘The Work of a Late Fifteenth-Century English Scribe, William Ebesham’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXXIX (1957), 310311Google Scholar, and private correspondence.

page 235 note 3 Grenehalgh's hand has now been identified in some sixteen MSS. and printed books. Besides those listed in Ker, op. cit., 178 n. 6, some important MSS. are: B.M. Royal 8 A. vii and Harley 6576, Cambridge Pembroke 221 and Corpus Christi 137, Chatsworth (Scale of Perfection), Bodleian Add. A. 44 (first noted by Professor Hunt, R. W., in his Editorial Note to Dom André Wilmart, ‘Le florilège mixte de Thomas Bekynton’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, IV (1958), 90Google Scholar), Douai Bibliothèque Municipale, MS. 396, and B.M. printed book IA 55141.

page 234 note 4 MS. Emmanuel. 35, fol. 99: ‘Hic correctus per librum quern sanctum ricardus de H. propria rnanu scripsit’. Cf. Deanesly, Incendium Amoris, 13–14, 63–83.

page 234 note 5 Allen, Writings Ascribed, 39–41, 231 item i and 238 item lxvii for ‘Willelme’ explicit; 236–239 items liii, lviii and lxxvi without name. For the Form of Living, cf. Allen, , English Writings of Richard Rolle Hermit of Hampole, Oxford 1931, 119Google Scholar and notes, 163.

page 234 note 6 W. Mede also wrote the note in MS. Cotton Vespasian D. ix, identifying Adam Dryburgh as the author of the Quadripartite Exercise; cf. above, n. 2.

page 235 note 1 Allen, Writings Ascribed, 239–240, items lxxv, lxxxiii, lxxxiv and lxxxv.

page 235 note 2 De Utilitate et Prerogatiuis Religionis: cf. Joy Russell-Smith, op. cit., 181–184, and Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, article ‘Hilton (Walter), by David Knowles and Joy Russell-Smith.

page 235 note 3 Gardner, Helen, ‘The Text of The Scale of Perfection’, Medium AEvum, V (1936), 1130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 235 note 4 Hussey, S. S., ‘The Text of The Scale of Perfection, Book II’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, LXV (1964), 7592Google Scholar.

page 235 note 5 Helen Gardner, op. cit., cites only one crux of the text of book. II, the omission of the last few sentences of the book. This variant is found in MSS. of the two groups which, in Book I, contain the ‘Christo-centric’ additions. These MSS., however, fall into two of the three sub-groups of S. S. Hussey's ‘x’ group of texts, and two other conflated texts having affiliations with the ‘x’ group. On the other hand, the texts with which these ‘shortending’ MSS. are related by Dame Helen's cruces for Book I fall into both ‘x’ and ‘y’ groups.

page 235 note 6 Hussey, op. cit., 92.

page 236 note 1 Hussey, , ‘Latin and English in The Scale of Perfection’, Mediaeval Studies, XXXV (1973), 456476CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 236 note 2 Sotheby's Catalogue, 16 December 1970, lot 21. This interesting MS. contains both the Latin Scale of Perfection and Willem Jordaens's Latin translation of Ruysbroeck's Die Geestelike Brulocht.

page 236 note 3 Russell-Smith, op. cit., 209–210; Hussey, ‘Latin and English’, 458.

page 236 note 4 Arnould, E. J. F., ‘Richard Rolle and the Sorbonne’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XXIII (1939), 68101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Republished as ‘Appendix II’ of The Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, Oxford 1957, 210238Google Scholar.

page 237 note 1 Jones, Dorothy, Minor Works of Walter Hilton, London 1929, xlviGoogle Scholar.

page 237 note 2 Now Hulton; although V.C.H. Lancashire, v (edited by William Ferrar and J. Brownbill), London 1911, 25, states that the form ‘Hilton’ continued in use until the seventeenth century.

page 237 note 3 Dorothy Jones, op. cit., xvi-xxxii, 3–77.

page 237 note 4 Only some five copies of the first Wynkyn de Worde edition of The Scale of Perfection (S.T.C. 14042) contain the Mixed Life appended (after the envoy stating that the Scale was printed at the request of Margaret Beaufort) as ‘Book III’. The most important of these five, and perhaps the earliest ‘association copy’ in English history—it bears the names of owners including Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth of York and the eminent eighteenth-century collector Narcissus Luttrell—is now in the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon: cf. Fifty-five Books Printed Before 1525 Representing the Works of England's First Printers: An Exhibition from the Collection of Paul Mellon, the Grolier Club 1968, 20–21 and plate. Through the kindness of Mr. Mellon I was allowed to examine this book, from which examination I am preparing a note in which I hope to detail the history of the ‘Book III’ printing anomaly.

page 237 note 5 Grenehalgh's attribution of the Cloud to Hilton was first noticed by Gardner, Helen L.; ‘Walter Hilton and the Authorship of the Cloud of Unknowing’, The Review of English Studies, IX (1933), 129147CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf- Colledge, E., The Mediaeval Mystics of England, London 1962, 6465Google Scholar; Phyllis Hodgson, op. cit., lxxxii-lxxxiv and literature cited by both. It is possible that Grenehalgh's notes do not refer to the Cloud and the same author's Book of Privy Counselling together: Douce 262, a London Charterhouse MS., probably did not contain the latter when annotated by Grenehalgh; rather, it was probably added later by Andrew Boorde. The only copy of this work that Grenehalgh is known to have seen is in MS. Harley 2373, which he may have annotated some time later at Mount Grace: cf. Hodgson, op. cit., x-xi.

page 238 note 1 Walsh and Colledge, op. cit.; N. R. Ker, op. cit., 305, 308–309.

page 237 note 2 Walsh and Colledge, op. cit.

page 237 note 3 ‘Liber domus salutacionis beatissime virginis Marie iuxta london ordinis Charthusiensis per M Chawncy/quem exarauit sanctus Willelmus Exmewe’. MS. Parkminster, fol. 95v. The form of this note suggests that William Exmewe was the scribe of the MS., and that the note itself was written by Maurice Chauncey, who became prior of the exiled English foundation of Sheen Anglorum. This ‘affidavit’ formula, in which the author of a note on the scribe of a particular MS. also gives his own name (perhaps as a control for accuracy), also occurs in MS. Trinity, Cambridge 354, in the hand of James Grenehalgh: ‘Scriptus quidem est hoc opus per Benet quondam procuratorem in Carthusia De Schen super Tamisiam Quod Grenehalgh Eiusdem domus professus Indigna Manu sua In Festo Relliquarum feria 6. sero. 1499. JA. G. [monogram]’.

page 238 note 4 Sister Marilyn Doiron, ‘The Middle English Translation of Le Mirouer des simples arms’, Dr. L. Reypens-Album, 130–152; and Margaret Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, a Middle English Translation (Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, v), Rome 1968, 243–355.

page 239 note 1 Colledge, Edmund and Guarnieri, Romana, The Glosses by ‘M.N.’ and Richard Methley to ‘The Mirror of Simple Souls’ (Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà, v), Rome 1968, 357382.Google Scholar

page 239 note 2 Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages, Berkeley 1972, 71–77, 200–208.

page 239 note 3 MS. Mayfield, Capt. M. Butler-Bowden (since acquired by the British Library): S. B. Meech and H. E. Allen, The Book of Margery Kempe, E.E.T.S., o.s. 212 (1940); and N. R. Ker, op. cit., 132.

page 239 note 4 Fr. James Walsh and Fr. E. Colledge are at present preparing a critical edition of the Revelations of Julian of Norwich, which will relate the short text to the other MSS. and printed texts.

page 239 note 5 Roger Lovatt, ‘The Imitation of Christ in Late Medieval England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, XVIII (1968), 97121Google Scholar: cf. Gumbert, J. P., ‘Een Engels Imitatio-Handschrift bij de Brugse Kartuizers’, Ons Geestelijk Erf, XLVIII (1974), 287289Google Scholar.

page 239 note 6 Thompson, Carthusian Order, 319, item 23 ‘12 capitula Hampol’ (Emendatio Vitae); 320, ‘Item musica ecclesiastica’ (Imitation of Christ); ‘Item Horologium divine sapiencie’; 321, ‘Hampol de incendio amoris’; 323 ‘Stimulus Amoris, et multa alia edificatoria de manu Domini Willelmi de Colle’; 325, ‘In primis liber qui dicitur The Chastysynge of Goddes chyldrun cum aliis’; ‘Item liber qui dicitur Scala perfeccionis cum aliis’; ‘Item liber qui dicitur Speculum vite Crysti cum aliis’; ‘Item paruus liber tractatus Ricardi heremite’; 326, ‘Item Incendium Amoris cum ceteris’; 329, ‘Item Gerson de contemptu mundi cum ceteris’ (Imitation of Christ); 330, ‘De Contemptu Mundi’ (twenty copies). I am unsure which work of Rolle's may be indicated by the last reference on 325, and whether that immediately preceding it is a Latin translation of Love's title.

page 240 note 1 Lovatt, op. cit., 100.

page 240 note 2 Knowles, David and Hadcock, R. Neville, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd. ed. London 1971, 133136Google Scholar.

page 240 note 3 Spearritt, Placid, ‘The Survival of Mediaeval Spirituality Among the Exiled English Black Monks’, American Benedictine Review, XXV (1974), 287316Google Scholar: cf. especially 307.