The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost and its role in manuscript anthologies.

Boffey, Julia

ABSTRACT

The Middle English prose texts known as The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost keep company in a number of late-fourteenth-century and fifteenth-century manuscripts, and are often erroneously assumed to be related parts of one whole. This essay examines their origins and their separate circulation before exploring the range of means by which they were drawn together in certain manuscript contexts, and investigating the precedents that prompted their collocation and abridgement in an edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde.

The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, which keep company in many manuscripts, are often assumed to be two related parts of one whole. The Abbey offers a programme of spiritual 'building', figured allegorically as the construction of an abbey, and itemizes the constituent parts and personnel necessary for the project in ways that are designed to help readers towards some apprehension of true 'religion of the heart'. (1) The Charter purports to be one of the documents associated with the building, confirming the grant of the Abbey and its lands from God; it is couched at the start in the terms of the legal document that would technically offer proof of the grant in material form, although its later sections abandon this mode. (2) Both texts survive in a large number of manuscripts, usually together, and both appeared together in printed form, in at least three editions, before the end of the fifteenth century. 3) In relation to the processes by which anthologies come into being, these texts are of some interest. Their collocation in both manuscript and printed forms is in itself proof of an impulse to anthologize, and the various means used to effect and announce their attachment to each other repay some study. Their appeal to a wide range of readers also gave them a breadth of circulation that led to their inclusion in larger compilations of many kinds. The forms of their collocation, and the manuscript and printed contexts in which they survive, will be the subjects of this discussion.

The Middle English version of the Abbey seems to have originated in the second half of the fourteenth century as a translation of a French text that survives in a number of manuscripts and in at least three distinct versions. (4) Hope Emily Allen's assumption was that 'it must have been originally written for women, since the personages are all women, and the original French text was perhaps composed for lay women of high position', a hypothesis apparently supported by the early ownership of some of the French manuscripts, although not matched by the generally more inclusive forms of address found in copies of the English version. (5) An ascription to Rolle included in some manuscripts of the English translation seems implausible both on lingustic grounds and in the face of a surviving original French text, although both Abbey and Charter appear in manuscripts with other texts by Rolle and related to his writings. (6) Whatever its authorship, the English translation seems to have been undertaken to serve the needs of a variety of readers: men and women, laypeople and religious. Its opening address, present in most manuscripts, invokes the needs of all those that 'wolde ben in religioun but they mowe nowt for poverte or for awe or for drede of her kyn or for bond of maryage' (ll. 3-5), but the rest of the text and the Charter alone in a further six (see n. 10 for details of these). The printed editions (all of which contain both, in abbreviated form) are listed in A Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, makes no attempt at exclusivity, and in fact contrives an effective blend of elements of both contemplative and secular traditions. (7)

The Charter bears no signs of any relationship to a French original, and indeed seems to have grown directly out of the English translation of the Abbey, making particular reference to a section towards its conclusion in which the new foundation, 'in al thyng wel ordeynt and God wel served in reste and in lykynge and in pes of soule' (ll. 316-17), is assailed by the devil and his four daughters. Although the Abbey concludes with the banishment of these 'foule wytes', the author of the Charter develops the notion that they pose a permanent threat to the individual Christian soul which the abbey represents, and proceeds, through a recapitulation of episodes from biblical history and the story of the incarnation, to explore possible ways of defending the abbey. At the start of the text, Adam is endowed by charter with the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, but allows it to be ruined through sin; only after the restitution made possible by the Crucifixion and Harrowing of Hell (events whose narration is preceded here by accounts of the Nativity and life of Christ) can it be restored to its former state, and defended by the four daughters of God from future attack.

As will be evident, the scope and spirit of the Charter are very different from those of the Abbey: Hope Emily Allen wrote of its anonymous author as 'a commonplace person', lacking the 'mystical interests' that inform its companion text (p. 337). It is certainly in some senses an opportunistic piece of writing, taking inspiration from parts of the Abbey which offered points of connection with existing Middle English texts and thus possibilities for extension by creative emulation. The granting by God to man of a charter, and the incorporation in the text of various formulae from the appropriate legal deed, seem to relate in some way to the various charters of Christ that proliferated in Middle English from the late fourteenth century onwards; (8) and the Charter's version of the story of the four daughters of God (often cited in connection with their debate in Piers Plowman), has been identified as a close relative, possibly an offshoot, of parts of The Life of the Virgin Mary and Christ in Dublin, Trinity College MS 423. (9)

The Charter none the less constitutes a not inappropriate extension of the Abbey's content, setting in the larger context of salvation history the Abbey's programme of pious exercise. Most of the manuscripts in which the texts appear in sequence contain some form of linking passage that draws attention to the logic of their connection and attempts to forge a smooth transition from one text to the other. In the early copy in the Vernon Manuscript (Bodleian MS Eng. poet. a. 1), for example, where the Abbey ends four lines down the left-hand column on folio [361.sup.r], with 'AMEN', the Charter picks up immediately as follows:

[thorn]us ende[thorn] [thorn]e abbeye of [thorn]e holygost [thorn]at set is in / conscience In whiche ben foundet alle goode uertues / and alle foule vices ben driuen out And [thorn]us / bigynne[thorn] [thorn]e chartre of [thorn]e same abbey of [thorn]e holi-/gost Her is [thorn]e bok [thorn]at speke[thorn] of a place [thorn]at is cleped / [thorn]e abbey of [thorn]e holigost [thorn]e wzuche [sic] schulde be founded/in clene conscience In wzuche abbey as ze bok tel/le[thorn] dwelle[thorn] nine and twenti gostliche ladyes A/monge whuche Charite is abbesse wisdam prioresse / mekenesse subprioresse [thorn]er is also pouert and clannesse ... [with a list of other virtues] ... [thorn]e ffader of heuene is foundeor of [thorn]is abbeye and [thorn]e holygost is wardeyn and visitour as ze bok telle[thorn] / Bote no[thorn]eles [thorn]auh hit beo so [thorn]at an abbey haue neuer / so good a ffoundeour or a visytour but zif [thorn]ei haue also / goode dedes and chartres of heore places wher [thorn]orw [thorn]ei / mowe kepe heore londes rentes and ffraunchises ofte sy/[thorn]es perauenture [thorn]ei schul ben greued and soffre muche per/secucion of heore enemys and of false men ... [a further definition of the enemies] ... [thorn]erfore I make her a bok [thorn]at schal be clept [thorn]e / chatre [sic] of [thorn]e abbeye of [thorn]e holigost In whuche I schal / telle furst whonne where and of whom [thorn]is abbeye was / furst foundet ... [summary of the contents] ... Sciant presentes / Her biginne[thorn] [thorn]e chartre of [thorn]is Abbeye / Wite[thorn] ze [thorn]at beo[thorn] now heere And [thorn]ei [thorn]at be[thorn] to comen.

This form of the connecting passage (or something very similar to it) occurs in a number of other manuscripts. The extent to which the transition is visually highlighted is very variable, however. In the Vernon MS a large coloured capital, extended into the centre border, marks the first letter of '[thorn]us ende[thorn] [thorn]e abbeye of [thorn]e holygost', and another large capital introduces the translation of the first words of the charter, 'Wite[thorn] ze'. Readers are thus made aware of a new departure. In some manuscripts the start of the Charter is rubricated: 'Here begynne[thorn] a boke [thorn]at speke[thorn] of a place / [thorn]at is cleped [thorn]e abbay of [thorn]e holy gost' (MS Harley 2406, fol. [68.sup.r]); 'Thus begynne[thorn]e the place of the abbasse and all / the convent and of ther charters and monementes (CUL MS Ll. 5. 18, fol. [9.sup.v]). But in CUL MS Ii. 4. 9, by contrast, the transition (fol. [74.sup.r]) is unmarked, and visually the texts together form a seamless whole.

Although the majority of manuscripts include both Abbey and Charter, consecutively and in this order, there are some instances in which only one text appears, and other instances in which the usual order is reversed. (10) In the dismembered manuscript that now forms BL MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiii and Oxford, Corpus Christi MS E 155, the Abbey concludes tersely, without the usual form of explicit, on folio [181.sup.r] of the Cotton MS, and is followed immediately on folio [181.sup.v] by the unique verse text known as A Father's Instructions to his Son (IMEV 2186): there does not seem to have been any intention to include the Charter. Similarly, in Bodleian MS Douce 141 the Abbey ends on folio [145.sup.r] ('[thorn]us ende[thorn] / [thorn]e abbey of [thorn]e holygoste and of [thorn]e / conscience in [thorn]e whoche be[thorn] funded / alle goode vertues and wikked vices of synne driuen out') and is followed on the same leaf by the the start of Richard Maydestone's translation of the Psalms. In Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 the Abbey starts with the headings 'Religio sancti spiritus ... Religio munda' (fol. 271), concludes with the colophon 'Explicit Religio sancti spiritus' (fol. 276), and is immediately followed by an extract from The Prick of Conscience (fol. [276.sup.v]).

In yet another variation on the forms of their connection, the two texts are in Bodleian MS Laud misc. 210 separated and in reverse order. The Charter begins on folio [136.sup.r], with the rubricated introduction 'Here eendi[thorn] [thorn]e condicions of char;iQte & begynni[thorn] [thorn]e abbeye of holy goo [...]' and the opening words 'Here is [thorn]e book [thorn]at speki[thorn] on a place [thorn]at is iclepid / [thorn]e abbeye of [thorn]e holy gost [thorn]e whiche schulde / be foundid in clene conscience'; it ends imperfectly on folio [146.sup.v], seemingly at the end of a gathering after which some unquantifiable parts of the original manuscript have been lost. The last text copied at the end of the manuscript, in a hand different from that which supplied all the other items, although on parchment that has been ruled in preparation as elsewhere in the book, is the Abbey, announced with the heading '[thorn]is is [thorn]e abbey of [thorn]e holy gost [thorn]at is founden in a place [thorn]at is clepud conscience' (fol. [180.sup.r]) and rounded o. 'Here ende[thorn] of [thorn]e holy gost' (fol. [185.sup.v]). It would seem here that an exemplar for the Abbey came to hand only after the copying of the Charter, and that it was added to the collection as a late extra.

While certain manuscripts serve to demonstrate that the texts could and did circulate independently, other witnesses preserve forms of connection more complex than the comparatively straightforward collocations discussed so far. BL MS Harley 5272 and Cambridge, Jesus College MS 46 introduce a linking paragraph to join the two texts together, truncating the usual conclusion of the Abbey and summarizing its content as a prelude to introducing the matter of the Charter:

Now haue I tolde zow what the / abbey is of the holigost And / how hit schulde be foundid in / clene conscience of sowle ffirste / I tolde zow [thorn]at ryztfullenesse and clen/nesse mote clansi [thorn]e place there [thorn]e abbey / schulde be y bilde ... [further summary] ... Now y seye to / zow [thorn]at in this holy abbey schulde be dw/ellynge one and thritti veruous lady/es Amonges the whiche as hit is tol/de bifore Charite is abbesse. (MS Harley 5272, fol. [115.sup.r])

Two other manuscripts have independent forms of wholesale conflation, by which parts of the Charter are effectively wrapped around a condensed version of the Abbey, producing a single text in which the seams of construction have been ironed out altogether. The former Bradfer-Lawrence manuscript, now in private hands in Tokyo, (11) contains a much abbreviated conflation of this kind, textually related to that preserved in the editions printed byWynkyn deWorde. (12)

A rather different and less condensed form of conflation appears in Bodleian MS Douce 323. This opens with words that begin the Charter in a number of witnesses: 'Here is [thorn]e book [thorn]at speke[thorn] of a place [thorn]at is called [thorn]e abbey / of [thorn]e holy gost [thorn]e whiche schulde ben founded in clene / conscience In [thorn]e whiche abbey as [thorn]e book telle[thorn] schuld / dwelle xxix gostly ladyes among which charite is / abbesse' (compare the opening words of the copy in the Vernon MS, transcribed above on p. 123). It continues with a text of the Charter similar to the version in the Vernon MS, with the difference that discussion of the Four Daughters of God is given extra prominence earlier in the treatise. At the end of the narrative of the Crucifixion and the Harrowing of Hell (the point where the text usually begins to wind itself up), most of the Abbey is inserted:

And whanne crist hadde founden [thorn]e noble abbesse / and here holy couent he ladde hem in to paradys / and badde hem abide [thorn]ere til here abbey were newe / bylded [thorn]e ffadir of heuene is ffoundour of [thorn]is abbey [thorn]e / sone schal rewle it and make officers and sette euery la/dy in here degre after here dignite aske[thorn] and [thorn]e holygost / schal vysite it and comforte [thorn]e ladyes and see [thorn]at echone / of hem kepe wel here obseruaunce A jhesu mercy wher / may [thorn]is abbey and [thorn]is religioun best be ifounded certes / neuer so wel ne so semely as in a place [thorn]at is cleped / conscience. (fol. [153.sup.v]) The concluding section of this conflated version returns to the Charter for its closing paragraph, and the text then ends with a striking red and black drawing of an abbey and the words 'Abbathia sancte Spiritus Here endi[thorn] a book [thorn]at is cleped [thorn]e abbey of [thorn]e / holy goost [thorn]e whiche is founded in clene conscience' (fol. [159.sup.v]).

De Worde's decision to print one of the conflated forms of the text which was apparently in circulation is of some interest. It may of course reflect nothing more than the accident of whichever manuscript happened to be available for his copy, but it could on the other hand suggest a considered commercial move: de Worde may have been aware of the existence of both Abbey and Charter, and have taken pains to procure as his copy a manuscript that offered both together in the most streamlined of possible forms. His business practices at this stage were no doubt shrewdly calculated in order best to cultivate a market for his books, and there are some signs that his treatment of the combined Abbey and Charter may have been part of a move to print 'uniform editions' that could be collected in parts for eventual binding together. (13) What seems to be the first of the three printed editions (STC 13608.7, extant in only one copy, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York), appears to date from relatively early in de Worde's career. It shares similarities of type and layout with deWorde's first edition of John Alcock's Mons Perfectionis (STC 278, dated 22 September 1496), suggesting the possibility that it was designed for publication at about the same time as the Alcock, and perhaps as a companion volume for it. (14) The probability that the two were somehow viewed as related commodities is underlined by the fact that de Worde's later editions of the Alcock treatise seem to keep pace with the dates assigned by RSTC to the later editions of the Abbey / Charter conflation: STC 279, dated 23 May 1497, corresponds with STC 13609, 1497?; STC 281, dated 27 May 1501, with STC 13610, 1500?. It is entirely in keeping with the flexible forms in which both Abbey and Charter circulated in manuscript that they should have made their way into print, in conflated form, in a mode that encouraged their compilation with other items. One copy of the third edition of the Abbey / Charter (STC 13610, 1500?) was bought by the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh in 1737, for 3s 8d, as part of a single quarto volume which at that point included de Worde's editions of The Three Kings of Cologne (STC 5573; printed after July 1499), Information for Pilgrims to the Holy Land (STC 14081, 1500?), Skelton's Bowge of Court (STC 22597, 1499?), and Lydgate's Temple of Glass (STC 17033, 1500?); (15) the eighteenth-century state of this anthology of small volumes may quite possibly reflect a much earlier assemblage made by a reader whose treatment of small printed books replicated some of the practices by which late Middle English texts were brought together in manuscript anthologies.

The contexts in which both Abbey and Charter survive in manuscript must have made the texts immediately interesting for de Worde, who in the mid-1490s had taken over Caxton's business and was seeking to extend both the commercial success and the range of titles printed by his former master. The breadth of address and the flexibility of both texts permitted a wide circulation, and inclusion in manuscript compilations of many kinds. The earliest manuscripts in which both were included, the twin Vernon and Simeon collections (Bodleian MS Eng. poet. a. 1 and BL MS Additional 22283), (16) might be broadly categorized as anthologies designed for spiritual instruction, and the Abbey and Charter continued to find homes in collections of this sort, such as Cambridge, Trinity College MS O. 1. 29 and BL MS Harley 2406 (each of which includes at least one tract seemingly aimed at enclosed religious). (17) Other anthologies of this kind, including mainly prose writings, are Bodleian MS Laud misc. 210, Cambridge, Magdalene College MS Pepys 2125, and Maidstone Museum MS 6. (18) The circulation of Abbey and Charter among religious is attested by a note on folio [11.sup.v] of BL MS Harley 2406, which reads 'Iste liber pertinet domine matilde stuerd amen quod [...]', and by an inscription on folio [274.sup.v] of Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS E 155, which relates it to the Cistercian house of Rievaulx: 'liber beate Marie de Rievalle ex procuracione domine Willelmus Spenser Abbatis eiusdem'. (19) It is likely too that the illustrated copy of the Abbey in BL MS Stowe 39, where it keeps company with The Desert of Religion, originated in a religious house, perhaps a Benedictine nunnery. (20)

The circulation of either or both of Abbey or Charter among laypeople and the non-enclosed seems to have increased over the course of the fifteenth century. The compilation of the Yorkshire gentleman-scribe Robert Thornton, now Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, is just one example of an anthology in which these texts accompany secular writings (here, romances) as well as works of spiritual guidance. (21) Combinations of the Abbey and Charter are to be found in association with several texts that had a wide transmission among lay readers: works such as The Prick of Conscience (as in CUL MS Dd. 11. 89, BL MS Egerton 3245, Bodleian MS Douce 141, as well as in the Vernon and Simeon MSS and in Lincoln Cathedral MS 91), (22) parts of The South English Legendary (Winchester College MS 33), (23) Cursor Mundi (BL MS Add. 36983), (24) the Layfolks' Massbook (CUL MS Ii. 4. 9), and the Layfolks' Catechism (Keio University, formerly Hopton Hall). (25) In Columbia University MS Plimpton 263 the Charter, along with another short English prose work called The Medis of the Masse, accompanies Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus's De Proprietatibus Rerum in an impressive compilation produced for Sir Thomas Chaworth of Wiverton, documented owner of a number of books. (26) Wynkyn de Worde's use of this same manuscript in setting the edition of Bartholomaeus which he printed in 1495 (STC 1536) may have alerted him to the potential of an edition of some form of the Charter, (27) although its text did not apparently serve as his copy.

Chaworth's manuscript serves to demonstrate that both Abbey and Charter found homes in collections produced for secular readers of some means. The carefully produced manuscript which is now Stonyhurst 23 is a smaller reminder of this, uniting both texts with The Three Kings of Cologne and with Chaucer's tale of Melibeus. (28) Both also occur with some frequency in larger collections with more compendious aims, possibly with the instruction of the young in mind. The conflated version in Bodleian MS Douce 323 accompanies the Brut, an A-text of Piers Plowman, and the tale of Ypotis, a story of a wise child that would seem to have a special relevance for youthful readers. The conjunction with Ypotis occurs also in BL MS Add. 36983, vastly expanded with a range of other texts, as if to serve the collective needs of a whole household, (29) and is evident as well in an inventory of books belonging to Sir John Paston, dated 1474-79, which includes 'A reede boke [thorn]at Percyvall Robsart gaffm(...)o. the Medis o. [thorn]e Masse, [thorn]e Lamentacion (...) o. Chylde Ypotis, A Preyer to [thorn]e Vernycle (...) callyd the Abbeye o. [thorn]e Holy Gooste'. (30)

Although most versions of the English translation of the Abbey remove the specific address to female readers that characterizes the fourteenth-century French original, there are some grounds for supposing that women played a significant role in the text's English circulation (both alone and in conjunction with the Charter). The spiritual abbey is of course presented as a house of female religious, with its own abbess and other female sta., and the Charter maintains the focus with an introduction in which a number of virtues are personified as women, and with an extended discussion of the debate between the four daughters of God. While the employment of female personifications in spiritual allegory is hardly unusual at this period, and one would hesitate to claim that either the Abbey or the Charter has an appeal in any sense gender-specific, the female interest that has been documented in the case of copies of the French Abbaye may none the less have been reflected in lesser ways in association with the related English texts. The probable associations of the Vernon MS with female readers have often been noted, (31) and the special appeal of the Abbey and the Charter for an audience of women is supported by the connections of MS Stowe 39 and MS Harley 2406 with female religious. (32) The text of the Abbey in MS Stowe 39 opens with an unusual gender-specific address to 'My dere systres,' (fol. [1.sup.r]) and is followed on folios 8v-9r by a large illustration that depicts nuns at work in the abbey (scrolls explaining the function of each), while the 'tyraunt' and his four evil daughters lurk in the bottom left-hand corner. The image of the Virgin that heads The Desert of Religion here on folio [10.sup.r] includes a female figure, in a nun's habit, praying for intercession.

A series of quite striking collocations draws the Abbey and the Charter together with the lives of female saints or with Marian texts in anthologies that may have been compiled with women readers in mind. (33) Some of these collections, such as for instance BL MS Add. 36983, which contains Bokenham's Life of St Dorothy as well as Ypotis and numerous other texts, are (as has been mentioned) large-scale anthologies that may have been conceived with a view to general family or household needs. Others, though, are smaller anthologies in which the conjunction of items is especially striking: CUL MS Ll. 5. 18 sets Abbey and Charter with prose lives of St Margaret and St Dorothy; MS Stonyhurst 43 includes the Charter with a prose life of St Katherine (and another prose text that covers events from the Passion through to the episodes recounted in the Gospel of Nicodemus); BL MS Harley 5272 amalgamates both Abbey and Charter with a verse life of St Dorothy and Lydgate's Life of Our Lady; MS Lambeth MS 432 sets both with a life of St Dorothy, a life St Jerome, some Bridgettine texts, and some miracles of the Virgin; (34) and the privately-owned manuscript in Tokyo accompanies its condensed and conflated version of both with a small group of Marian texts. (35)

Women readers were clearly important in the transmission of the Abbey and the Charter, and their particular tastes and needs may have been influential in shaping some of the anthologies in which one or both were copied. But perhaps the most striking feature of these two texts is their ready adaptability to the needs of late-medieval readers of all kinds, and their capacity to be reshaped and redefined according to various contingencies. Their readers included pious women--from the likely audience of the Vernon MS to those who perhaps encountered a small collection such as MS Harley 5272--but they also accommodated Sir Thomas Chaworth and Sir John Paston, and perhaps took in an early purchaser of de Worde's printed books whose tastes incorporated The Temple of Glass and The Bowge of Court as well as spiritual instruction. To trace through the course of the fifteenth century the different forms of the texts and their different environments affords considerable insight into the diversity that characterizes late medieval manuscript anthologies in England.

(1) Ed. from Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 by C. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers. Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church, and his followers, 2 vols (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895), i, 321-27, and G. G. Perry, Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse, rev. edn, EETS OS 26 (1914), pp. 48-58; from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Eng. poet. a. 1 by P. D. Consacro, 'A Critical Edition of The Abbey of the Holy Ghost from All Known Extant English Manuscripts with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Fordham University, 1971); and from Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud 210, byN. F. Blake, Middle English Religious Prose (London: Arnold, 1972), pp. 88-102 (this version is also available in Catholic England: Faith, Religion and Observance before the Reformation, trans. and annotated by R. N. Swanson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), pp. 96-104). All quotations are from Blake's text unless otherwise indicated.

(2) Ed. by Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, i, 337-62, from Bodleian MSS Eng. poet. a. 1 and Laud 210; and from Bodleian MS Eng. poet. a. 1 by C. E. Fanning, 'The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost: A Critical Edition from All Known Extant Manuscripts with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary' (unpublished doctoral thesis, Fordham University, 1975). All quotations are from Horstmann's text, unless otherwise indicated.

(3) The manuscripts are listed in the theses of Consacro and Fanning, and (under H. 9 and H. 16) in P. S. Jolliffe, A Check-List of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974); (as numbers 39 and 590) in R. E. Lewis, N. F. Blake, and A. S. G. Edwards, Index of Printed Middle English Prose (New York: Garland, 1985); and (as entries 184 and 186) in R. R. Raymo, 'Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction', in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, vii, ed. by A. E. Hartung (Hamden, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1986). To Jolliffe's lists, which are the fullest, the following corrections can be made: Bodleian MS Douce 323 contains an amalgamation of both Abbey (fols [153.sup.v]-[158.sup.v]) and Charter (fols [140.sup.v]-[153.sup.v], [158.sup.v]-[159.sup.v]); the Hopton Hall MS was sold by Sotheby's on 8 December 1989, lot 89, and is now in the library of Keio University, Tokyo; 'Sotheby's 13 / 10 / 42 lot 172', in fact sold by Sotheby's on 14 October 1942 to become Bradfer-Lawrence 8, was sold again at Sotheby's on 5 December 1989, lot 89, and is now in private hands in Tokyo (this manscript contains a conflated and abbreviated form of the Abbey and Charter, similar to that in de Worde's printed editions); BL MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiii, fol. 181, was originally part of the manuscript which is now Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS E 155. The texts survive together in eighteen manuscripts, with the Abbey alone in a further five manuscripts, and Ireland, 1475-1640, first compiled by A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave, 2nd edn begun by W. A. Jackson and F. S. Ferguson, completed by K. F. Pantzer, 3 vols (London: Bibliographical Society, 1986-91), numbers 13608.7-13610. On these see also C. F. Buhler, 'The First Edition of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost', Studies in Bibliography, 6 (1954), 101-06.

(4) H. E. Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle Hermit of Hampole and Materials for his Biography (New York and London: Modern Language Association, 1927), p. 337; Blake, Middle English Religious Prose, p. 88.

(5) Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, p. 337; K. Chesney, 'Notes on Some Treatises of Devotion Intended for Margaret of York (MS Douai 365)', Medium AEvum, 20 (1951), 11-39. Blake, Middle English Religious Prose, p. 89, points out that the French texts are addressed only to a 'sister', whereas most copies of the English translation are directed to both male and female readers.

(6) Rolle's authorship is for instance claimed in London, Lambeth Palace MS 432, 'here begynneth Richard hampspull of the abbay of the holy goest full nessessarys' (fol. [37.sup.v]) and implied in BL MS Egerton 3245, where the Abbey immediately follows a colophon to The Prick of Conscience that reads 'Here endi[thorn] as ze may see / Stimulus consciencie / Aftir Richard [thorn]e holy ermyte / that so[thorn]ly [thorn]us gan [thorn]is book endyte // Hampool// (fol. [156.sup.v]). On the linguistic evidence, see Blake, Middle English Religious Prose, p. 88.

(7) S. S. Hussey, 'Implications of Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Part 4', in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. by Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), pp. 61-74 (especially pp. 65-69). See also P. Consacro, 'The Author of The Abbey of the Holy Ghost: A Popularizer of the Mixed Life', Fourteenth-Century English Mystics Newsletter, 2 (1976), 15.

(8) See M. C. Spalding, The Middle English Charters of Christ, Bryn Mawr College Monographs, Monograph series 15 (Bryn Mawr: Bryn Mawr College, 1914), especially pp. xxxviii-xxxix; the tradition is also briefly discussed in R. F. Green, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 259-63.

(9) S. Brook, 'The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost', Modern Language Review, 54 (1959), 481-88, and R. A. Klinefelter, 'The Four Daughters of God: A New Version', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 52 (1953), 90-95.

(10) BL MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiii / Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS E 155, BL MS Stowe 39, CUL MS Dd. 11. 89, Bodleian MS Douce 141, and Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 have the Abbey without the Charter; Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125, Stonyhurst MS 43, Longleat MS 4, Maidstone Museum MS 6, the Keio University MS, and New York, Columbia University MS Plimpton 263 have the Charter without the Abbey.

(11) Formerly in the Huth collection, and also owned at one stage by W. W. Greg. For a brief description, see Phyllis M. Giles, 'A Handlist of the Bradfer-Lawrence Manuscripts Deposited on Loan at the Fitzwilliam Museum', Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 6 (1973), 86-99.

(12) This conflation was briefly noted (with reference to the Tokyo MS and to the printed editions) in Allen, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, p. 335. Consacro and Fanning both refer to this conflation, and to that in MS Douce 323, in their theses, although neither collates them. Raymo, Manual, p. 2340, suggests that the same conflated version is to be found in the Tokyo and Douce manuscripts, and that it appears as well in the Keio University MS (formerly Hopton Hall). This does not seem to be the case, however: see the description in Mostly British: Manuscripts and Early Printed Materials from Classical Rome to Renaissance England in the Collection of Keio University Library, ed. by T. Matsuda (Tokyo: Keio University, 2001), p. 60, which indicates that the Keio MS includes only the Charter.

(13) For further discussion of this, see A. S. G. Edwards and C. M. Meale, 'The Marketing of Early Printed Books', The Library, sixth series, 15 (1993), 95-124; J. Boffey, 'The Treatise of a Galaunt in Manuscript and Print', The Library, sixth series, 15 (1993), 175-86, and 'Wynkyn de Worde and Misogyny in Print', in Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake, ed. by G. Lester (Sheffeld: Sheffeld Academic Press, 1999), pp. 236-51.

(14) Buhler, 'The First Edition of The Abbey of the Holy Ghost', and H. S. Bennett, 'Notes on Two Incunables: The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and A Ryght Profytable Treatyse', The Library, 5th series, 10 (1955), 120.

(15) A copy of the second edition of Alcock's Mons Perfectionis (STC 279, 1497) was added to the compilation by the Advocates' Library, although it was apparently not part of the original purchase. The collection is now disbound. For a brief description, see The Taill of Rauf Coilyear, Printed by Robert Lekpreuik at St Andrews in 1572: A Facsimile of the Only Known Copy, with a bibliographical note by William Beattie (Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 1966).

(16) The relationship between the two is discussed by A. I. Doyle, 'The Shaping of the Vernon and Simeon Manuscripts', reprinted in revised form in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. by Pearsall, pp. 1-13.

(17) For a description of the Trinity MS, see M. R. James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. A Descriptive Catalogue, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902), iii, 33. The texts are Jolliffe, Checklist, M.3(b), an exposition of the paternoster addressed 'to his dere sister in god', in Trinity; and in Harley, Jolliffe, Checklist, H.21, an exposition of Hilton.

(18) The Pepys and Maidstone MSS are described in R. McKitterick and R. Beadle, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, Volume V: Manuscripts. Part I: Medieval (Cambridge: Brewer, 1992), pp. 54-61, and Ker, MMBL, iii, 330-31; the prose contents of all three manuscripts are indexed in Jolliffe, Checklist.

(19) BL MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiii, folios 181-201, formed part of the same manuscript; see N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. Supplement to the Second Edition, ed. by A. G. Watson (London: Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 58; also J. B. Friedman, Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), pp. 195, 337n. Consacro notes in his thesis similarities of decoration between this and the Lincoln Thornton manuscript, and posits a common Yorkshire provenance.

(20) Friedman, Northern English Books, pp. 195, 337n, and K. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390-1490, 2 vols (London: Miller, 1996), ii, 193.

(21) For a facsimile and full description, see The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral MS 91), intro. by D. S. Brewer, 2nd edn (London: Scolar Press, 1977); G. R. Keiser, 'Lincoln Cathedral MS 91: Life and Milieu of the Scribe', Studies in Bibliography, 32 (1979), 158-79, and 'More Light on the Life and Milieu of Robert Thornton', Studies in Bibliography, 36 (1983), 111-19; J. J. Thompson, 'Another Look at the Religious Texts in Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS91', in Late-Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. by A. J. Minnis (Cambridge: Brewer, 1993), pp. 169-87.

(22) R. E. Lewis and A. McIntosh, A Descriptive Guide to the Manuscripts of 'The Prick of Conscience', Medium AEvum Monographs, n.s. 12 (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 1982), respectively pp. 42-43 (CUL Dd. 11. 89; the Abbey and the Prick are in parts of the manuscript that were originally separate); 62-63 (MS Egerton 3245); 100-01 (MS Douce 141).

(23) Described in Ker, MMBL, iii, 623-25.

(24) Described in G. Guddat-Figge, A Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Munich: Fink, 1976), pp. 166-68.

(25) The Sotheby's catalogue description (5 December 1989, lot 89) suggests that this manuscript includes the Abbey, but it in fact contains only the Charter; see above, note 12, for details of a more recent account of the contents.

(26) On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's Translation of 'Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum', ed. by M. C. Seymour, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975-88), iii, 19-22; J.M. Manly and E. Rickert, The Text of The Canterbury Tales', 8 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), i, 609-10; Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts, ii, 204-06.

(27) R. W. Mitchener, 'Wynkyn de Worde's Use of the Plimpton Manuscript of De Proprietatibus Rerum', The Library, fifth series, 6 (1951-52), 7-18.

(28) Described in Ker, MMBL, iii, 393-94; the texts occur with the Three Kings and The Prioress's Tale in BL MS Harley 1704.

(29) The Three Kings seems to have served similar purposes: see J. Boffey, '"Many grete myraclys ... in divers contreys of the eest": The Reading and Circulation of the Middle English Prose Three Kings of Cologne', in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain. Essays for Felicity Riddy, ed. by J. Wogan-Browne and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 35-47.

(30) The Paston Letters, ed. by N. Davis, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971-76), i, 517-18; G. A. Lester, 'The Books of a Fifteenth-Century English Gentleman: Sir John Paston', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 88 (1987), 200-17.

(31) C. M. Meale, 'The Miracles of Our Lady: Context and Interpretation', in Studies in the Vernon Manuscript, ed. by Pearsall, pp. 115-36 (pp. 131-36).

(32) See above, p. 127.

(33) For recent studies of women's reading of saints' lives, see J. Wogan-Browne, Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture, 1150-1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), and K. J. Lewis, The Cult of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1999).

(34) For a description and discussion, see M. R. James and C. Jenkins, A Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace: The Medieval Manuscripts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 599-601; G. R. Keiser, 'Patronage and Piety in Fifteenth-Century England: Margaret, Duchess of Clarence, Symon Wynter and Beinecke MS 317', Yale University Library Gazette, 60 (1985), 32-46. The early readership of Harley 5272 is discussed by Nicole Rice in an article forthcoming in Viator.

(35) See above, n. 11.

JULIA BOFFEY

Queen Mary University of London