Medieval English Prose for Women
Medieval English Prose for Women, Eds. Bella Millett & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Claredon Press, Oxford, 1990
The texts edited in this anthology are all taken from a single group of religious prose works, written in the West Midlands in the early thirteenth century. / The longest of these works, and the best known both in the Middle Ages and today, is the Ancrene Wisse, a work of guidance for female recluses. The ancre—the anchorite or anchoress—was a man or woman who had chosen to be enclosed for life in an individual cell, usually built on to the wall of a church; … (Introduction, xi)
The first eight sections of his work prescribes the recluses’ daily routine of prayers, and the general conduct. But he emphasizes that these recommendations on external behavior, the ‘Outer Rule’, should be seen as no more than a handmaid to its lady, the ‘Inner Rule’—the divine commands governing the heart and conscience—to which he devotes the main body of his work. (xi)
Ancrene Wisse is anonymous, … recent research is pointing increasingly towards Dominican origin. (xi)
It was adapted for nuns, for male religious communities, for laymen, and for a general audience; in a period when translation was normally from Latin or French into English; in a period when tanslation was normally from Latin or French into English, it was translation once into Latin and twice into French; and it continued to be read, copied, and borrowed from into the early sixteenth century. (xii)
…five works—lives of the virgin martyrs Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana, the letter on virginity called by its editors A Letter on Virginity [written in Middle English letters in text], and an allegory on the custody of the soul, Sawles Warde—are collectively described as the ‘Katherine Group’. It is uncertain whether the author of Ancrene Wisse also wrote any or all of these other works. (xii)
Although this group of works can still be read for profit as well as pleasure, there is little that is original about their content. They seem to have been written mainly to make material already available in Latin accessible to an audience whose first—and, in some cases, only—lanugage was English. Some of them, like Sawles Warde and the saints’ lives, are free translation from Latin sources, and even those works, like Ancrene Wisse and A Letter on Virginity, which have no single Latin source are heavily indebted for their material to earlier Latin writers. What is distinctive about them is their treatment of this material. In a period when few good writers chose to write in English, these works show an unexpected literary skill and confidence. Even where they are drawing directly on a Latin source they elaborate and develop it freely, sometimes recreating its stylistic effects in English, more often adding embellishments of their own. This remarkable flowering of English [xiii] prose in a largely barren age was probably the result of a combination of several factors. One major influence was certainly the native tradition of alliterative writing prose and verse, which had survived the Norman Conquest more successfully in the West Midlands than elsewhere. English scholars between the wars tended to emphasize the ‘Englishness’ of the group and its link with Anglo-Saxon culture; … (xiii-xiv)
But the stylistic origins of the group as a whole are more complex, and post-war scholarship has laid greater emphasis on the influence of contemporary French and Latin culture. (xiv)
In early Christian thought, a virginal habit of mind is even more important tha literal intactness (which can be rendered meaningless by the wrong interior disposition). (xv)
The purpose of virginity is to help the soul develop the power of seeing God. It also expresses the pervasive human intuition that a general early state of blessedness has been lost…after the expulsion from Paradise’,… (xv)
Had man been content to replace the angels in God’s creation and not imitate Lucifer’s disobedience, our nature could and should have been like that of the angels. As it is, we are offered a promise of angelic life [xv] only after the resurrection. Virginity, however, offers an earthly approximation… (xv-xvi)
Far from being a life of negation, virginity is the fullest expression of human free will, since, as Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and others insist, virginity is not commanded but counseled by St Paul… (xvi)
In Ancrene Wisse Part 7 Christ is presented (in an allegory alos found elsewhere) as the knightly lover of an ungrateful lady, the soul;… Loss of virginity is presented as selling oneself too cheaply, doing something unworthy. (xvii)
A Letter on Virginity’s arguments are sometimes objected to for being directed towards the self-interest of the virgin, for presenting spiritual rewards as social enticements. … In the heavenly court, the virgin will have the prettiest crown and the most beautiful robes (16/17-19) as well as the dazzling aureola reserved for virgins (20/10-14); the highest social pre-eminence will be hers, … (xvii)
…tower of Zion (a fortification in Jerusalem). By traditional etymology (as explained at 2/26-27) this is a watch-tower (specula) and hence a place for contemplation (sepculatio). The image of virginity as a high state of life becomes a major structural metaphor of this first section, in which A Letter on Virginity concentrates less on the virgin’s powers of contemplating God from her exalted position than on establishing that the sole direction in which one can move away from [xviii] virginity is downwards. (xviii-xix)
Many of its observations on household drudgery and martial bickering come ultimately from the arguments of Paul and Jerome. (xix)
The vivid and detailed account of the miseries of motherhood also uses an established tradition—that of contempt of the world. This is given powerful expression in a probable source of A Letter on Virginity, Pope Innocent III’s treatise, On the Misery of the Human Condition (completed in 1195). For Innocent, as for Augustine, the post-lapsarian sexual act is inevitably tainted to a greater or lesser degree with lust and the human child is ‘conceived therefore with lasciviousness and filth, brought forth with sorrow and pain, nourished with trouble and labour, watched over with anxiety and fear. [M. Maccarrone (ed.), De miseria humanae conditiones (Verona, 1955), Bk. 1, ch. 6, ss 2, pp. 13-14; and see Millett, A Letter on Virginity, 17/3-6 n.] (xix)
Like its Katherine Group sister-legends of St Katherine of Alexandria and St Juliana of Nicomedia, Seinte Margarete takes a virgin martyr for its [xx] heroine. … all set in the Diocletian persecutions of the early fourth century in exotic locales in Asia Minor. All three saints are either entirely legendary martyrs or have only dubious traces of genuine early cults. They are presented as brides of Christ, interrogated and tortured by tyrant officials who want them to abandon both their virginity and their faith. (xx-xxi)
In no virgin-martyr passio does the tyrant simply rape the saint; the official focus of these narratives is upon the conquest of wills between the tormentor and the virgin. (xxiii)
While Margaret’s emotions are vividly realized, they are not used to define her as an individual but to demonstrate exemplary responses. [xxiii] As in many medieval saints’ lives, there is no attempt at realistic characterization; the saint is not a psychologically complex figure, vulnerable to doubts and inner conflicts, but is idealized to the point of impersonality. Margaret can feel fear (58/23-7), but not uncertainty, and her desire for God, stated firmly at the outset (46/9-17), can only be confirmed, not developed, in the course of the narrative. (xxiii-xxiv)
Similarly, the power and ornateness of Margaret’s prayer does not express her sensibility but the majesty of God. Their psalm-based imagery is vivid, visual, and yet formulaic, … (xxiv)
Though heresies within Christianity and Islamic conquests from without were part of European experience at the time of Seinte Margarete’s composition, the legend is designed to reinforce faith rather than to combat paganism. (xxiv)
…Sawles Warde treats the human being allegorically, in this case as a household under the overlordship of God and open to unrest within the attack from without…metaphor of the human being as building comes from a long [xxv] tradition with many medieval examples…The master of the house is Reason (‘Wit’ in early Middle English 86/9), who, in the customary hierarchical conception of marriage, must control his unruly wife Will and the household servants who all too readily enjoy her indiscipline (86/9-13). (xxv-xxvi)
…the cardinal virtue become, in Sawles Warde’s selectively expanded treatment, the four daughters of God, lent to Wit as officers of the household, to help him guard God’s treasure, the soul. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century theorists agree as to the qualities and usually as to the hierarchy of these virtues, but they are seldom seen as God’s daughters, … The relationship of the four daughters becomes a working interdependence, a model of female co-operation and mutual esteem … (xxviii)
…the reclusive life, austere and extreme as it was, was not of its nature the refuge of the marginal of the desperate, but a carefully regulated institution, under strict Episcopal supervision, not permitted without previous adequate financial arrangements, and a favourite object of both aristocratic patronage and charitable donation from other social classes. Thirteenth-century recluses were often high-born and influential ladies, like the sisters for whom Ancrene Wisse was originally written, but village recluses of more humble origin were also admired and supported by their communities. (xxx)
Both the ingenuity of some of the metaphors and the author’s tendency to present his arguments as a series of methodically numbered points—the four chief loves, the three components of a shield, the three baths—suggest that the audience is being encouraged not only to feel but to reflect and remember. (xxxii)
The ‘Outer Rule’ in the Corpus version has been heavily revised. …and marginal additions in another hand, probably the author’s own, … [xxxiii] the general tendency of his alterations is to discourage excessive asceticism. His recluses must…be less inhibited about asking benefactors for what they need (some restrictions on this are deleted in 134/13-17). They should fast only when in good health (130/28-9), pay more attention to personal hygiene…, and not see their necessary detachment from the world as a justification for in hospitality or rudeness to visitors… (xxxiii-xxxiv)
Sawles Warde, A Letter on Virginity, and Ancrene Wisse also draw to some extent on the native alliterative tradition; the influence is strongest in Sawles Warde, least obvious in Ancrene Wisse, which was probably the latest written of the group. (xxxvi)
To some extent there is a correlation between diction and style: the works which are closest to the native alliterative have the lowest proportion of borrowings from Latin and French, and Cecily Clark comments, ‘Although Romance loanwords could be and were used to make alliterative phrases…a writer using traditional alliterative style must often have been led by the semi-formulaic phraseology conventional with this style traditional choice of words.’ (xxxviii)
The style of this group of works cannot be fully appreciated unless we remember that they were written to be heard as well as read. Both of the major influences on their style, the native technique of alliterative writing and the devices of Latin rhetoric, were methods largely designed to produce verbal symmetries and echoes which would appeal directly to the ear. While the works were intended at least partly for an audience of recluses, and must sometimes have been used for solitary study, even this kind of reading in the Middle Ages was rarely silent; and both the scarcity and expense of manuscripts and the limitations of literacy meant that medieval works usually had a larger audience of hearers than readers. (xxxviii)
Listen, daughter, and behold, and incline your ear; and forget your people and your father’s house. David the psalmist is speaking in the Psalter to the bride of God—that is, every virgin who has the virtues of virginity—and he says: ‘Hear me, daughter, behold and incline your ear; and forget your people and your father’s house.’ (beginning, A Letter on Virginity; A letter on virginity for the encouragement of virgins, 3)
‘Zion’ was once the name of the high tower of Jerusalem; and ‘Zion’ corresponds to ‘high vision’ in English. And this tower signifies the high state of virginity, … (3)
But the people of Babylon that I mentioned before, the army of the Devil of hell, who are carnal lusts and the fiend’s temptation, constantly make war on this tower and attack it, … such honour as it is to be God’s spouse, the bride of Jesus Christ, … and from being God’s bride and his free daughter (for she is both together) becomes a serf to a man and his slave, to do and suffer all that he pleases, … (5)
Our Lord is so generous that he does not wish his chosen ones to be ones to be without reward here in this world; for there is so much comfort in his grace that all they see pleases them, and though it may seem to other people that they have much to bear, it does not trouble them but seem easy to them, and though it may seem to other people that they have much to bear, it does not trouble them but seems easy to them, and they have more delight in it than anyone else would in worldly pleasure. (7)
Therefore, innocent maiden, forget your people as David tells you to: that is, put away the thoughts which stir your heart through physical desires, … (9)
…that disgusting act, that animal union, that shameless coupling, that stinking and wanton deed, full of filthiness. (It is, nevertheless, to be tolerated to some extent within marriage, as you will hear later.) If you ask why God created such a thing, but Adam and Eve perverted it through their sin and corrupted our nature, … (9)
Constantly pray for his grace; and overcome with its help that weak nature which draws so many into servitude, and casts them foully into filth. (9)
And the king will desire your beauty. ‘And then’, says David, ‘the king will desire your beauty,’ the king of all kings desire you as a lover. And you then, blessed maiden, who are assigned to him with the mark of virginity, do not break that seal which seals you both together. (9)
Virginity is the one gift granted to you from heaven; if you once dispose of it, you will never regain another quite like it. For virginity is the queen of heaven, and the world’s redemption through which we are saved, a virtue above all virtues, and most pleasing of all to Christ. (11)
Angel and maiden are equal in virtue through the power of virginity, though as yet their degrees of blessedness divide them; and though their virginity is more blessed now, yours is more difficult to keep intact, and will be recompensed by a greater reward. (11)
…as you stand higher, be more greatly afraid of falling; for the higher the degree, the worse the fall. The envious Devil sees you have climbed so high towards heaven through the virtue of virginity, which is the most hateful of virtues to him; … (13)
…the more strongly you stand against him, the more furiously he attacks out of chagrin and rage; because it seems to him so much the more shameful to be overcome, that something as weak as flesh is—and especially a woman’s—should be able to surpass him. (13)
Every carnal impulse and lecherous desire which arises in your heart is the Devil’s arrow; but it does not wound you unless it is lodged in you, and remains so long that you wish your desire could be acted out. (13)
And observe carefully why: our physical desire is the Devil’s offspring; our reason is God’s daughter; and both are within us. So here there is always conflict, and must always be of necessity, because fighting between them will never cease while we live in this world. But it is well for whoever follows Reason, God’s daughter, because she sides with Virginity, who is her sister; but, on the other hand, your desire for that physical pleasure sides with Lechery, who is the Devil’s offspring as she is, and Sin her mother. (15)
Virginity never revives after that wound. Oh, whoever saw then how the angels are distressed to see their sister so dreadfully overthrown, and the devils capering and clapping their hands together, laughing raucously, his heart would be stony if it did not melt in tears! (15)
Guard yourself, innocent maidens. They say that opportunity makes a thief; flee all those things, and avoid them earnestly, from which such irremediable loss may arise. (15)
Who could wish for more? The eunuch who keeps my sabbaths, etc. Who can imagine the happiness, the joy and the bliss, the glory of the reward which this short sentence contains? ‘I shall’, he says, ‘give them a place and a better name than sons and daughters.’ (17)
…the promise that they are given to sing with angels—whose equals they are through their heavenly way of life, while they are still living in the flesh on earth—to sing that sweet song and that angelic melody, surpassingly joyful, that no saint who is not a virgin may sing in heaven; and to follow God almighty, full of every good, wherever he goes, as the others may not, though they are all his sons and all his daughters. And none of these others’ crowns, nor their beauty, nor their robes, can equal theirs, they are so incomparably bright and shining to look at. (17)
And those who are in heaven sing the praises of God, to thank him for his grace and for his kindness. The married thank him because at least, when they were in danger of falling headlong, they did not fall all the way, for marriage saved them, that law which God has established for the weak. (17)
…virginity, which God does not command, but recommends to whoever wants to be among the small number of his best-loved friends, … (19)
…if it were commanded and then not kept, the breach would be mortal sin. It was for this reason that marriage was made lawful within Holy Church, as a bed for the sick, to catch the weak who cannot stand on the high hill… (19)
For if anyone falls from the honour of virginity so that the mattress of wedlock does not catch them, … must sing a song of lamentation for evermore in hell, unless repentance should bring them back to life… For if they are revived and made whole in this way, they are in the rank of widows, and will sing in the circle of widows before the married in heaven. (19)
And all who rejoice in heaven are crowned with a victor’s crown; but the virgins have, over and above what is common to all alike, a circlet shining brighter than the sun, called aureola in Latin. As for the flowers which are engraved on it, and the inset jewels, no one could find the words to describe what they are like. (21)
[marriage] It is entirely for this reason, or partly for it—now admit the truth—to cool your lust by the defilement of your body, to satisfy your carnal desire through intercourse with a man? By God, it is disgusting to think about it, and even more disgusting to talk about it; … (23)
…a great deal more loathsome than anyone well-bred can decently describe, what makes it popular among brutish men but their viciousness, which draws them on like animals to all that gives them pleasure, … (23)
…animals mate naturally, although they lack reason, at one time of the year. Many confine themselves to a single mate, and after losing that one will never take another. And man, who should have reason and do all that he did with its consent, pursues that filthiness at all times, and takes one after another; and many, which is worse, take many together. (23)
…a man’s strength is worth a great deal, and I need his help for support and food. Worldly wealth springs from the union of man and wife, and a brood of fine [25] children who give much happiness to their parents.’ Now you have made this claim, and it looks as if what you say is true; but I shall show that it is all glossed over with falsehood. (23-25)
You say that a wife has much happiness from her husband when they are well matched, and each is pleased with the other in every way. Yes—but it is seldom seen in this world. And even supposing they do have such happiness and such delight, what does the greatest part consist in but carnal filthiness or worldly vanity, which all turns to sorrow and pain in the end? … the greater their happiness was together, the more intense is the grief at parting. Woe to him, therefore (as St Augustine says), who is attached with too much love to any earthly thing; … (25)
You spoke above of a man’s help towards maintenance and food. Come now! You have little need to worry about your own support, a modest maiden as you are, and the dear beloved of him who is Lord of all things, that he cannot easily—and that he will not gladly—provide you generously with all that you need. And even supposing you did suffer want or endured any hardship for his precious love, as the others do for man’s, he allows it for your own good, to test whether you are faithful, and prepares your reward in heaven many times over. (25)
[money] They gain it with misery, they guard it with fear, they lose it with grief; … (27)
And what if…you do not have your heart’s desire with him, or riches either, and must pine away in poverty between bare walls, and bring forth your children to lack of bread; and besides this, be subject to a husband you hate, so that even if you had every kind of wealth he would turn it into misery for you? (27)
When he is out, you are filled with anxiety and fear of his homecoming. While he is at home, all your wide halls seem to you too narrow. His attention makes you nervous; his detestable clamour and his ill-bred shouting frighten you. He rails at you and scolds you and abuses you shamefully, treats you disgracefully as a lecher does his whore, beats you and thrashes you like his bought slave and his born serf. Your bones aches and your flesh smarts, your heart within you swells with violent rage, and your outward countenance burns with anger. What will your relations in bed be like? But those who love each other best often differ there, although they may give no sign in the morning; and often, however much they love one another, each gives bitter offence to the other in many small matters when they are on their own. She must often submit to his will much against her own will, in great distress; and especially in bed she must put up with all his indecencies and his improper games, however obscenely devised, whether she wants to or not. May Christ protect every maiden from asking or wanting to know what they are; fro those who have most experience of them find them most loathsome, and call those woman happy indeed who have no idea what they might be, and detest what they are doing. (29)
If she cannot have children [29] she is called barren; her lord loves her and honours her less, … (29-31)
…in carrying it there is heaviness and constant discomfort; in giving birth to it, the cruelest of all pains, and sometimes death; in bringing it up, many weary hours. As soon as it comes into this life, it brings more anxiety with it than joy, especially to the mother. For if it is born handicapped, as often happens, and one of its limbs is missing or has some kind of defect, it is a grief to her and shame to all its family,… If it is born healthy and seems to promise well, fear of its loss is born along with it, … (31)
By God, woman, even if it were not at all for the love of God, or for the hope of heaven, or for the fear of hell, you should avoid this act above all things, for the integrity of your flesh, for the sake of your body, and for your physical health. (31)
[pregnancy] Your rosy face will grow thin, and turn green as grass; your eyes will grow dull, and shadowed underneath, and because of your dizziness your head will ache cruelly. (31)
…when she comes in, hears her child screaming, sees the cat at the flitch and the dog at the hide, her loaf burning on the hearth and her calf sucking, the pot boiling over into the fire—and her husband is complaining? (35)
Blessed is his spouse, whose virginity is unblemished when he begets offspring on her, and who, when she bears children by him, does not labour or suffer. Blessed is the husband, when no woman can be a virgin unless she loves him, or free unless she serves him, whose offspring is immortal and whose marriage gift is the kingdom of heaven. (35)
If you would like children, devote yourself to him with whom you shall, in your virginity, give birth to spiritual sons and daughters, who can never die but will play before you for ever in heaven, which are the virtues that he engenders in you through his sweet grace; … (37)
But, maiden, although you may have physical integrity, if you have pride, envy, or anger, avarice or weakness of will in your heart, you are prostituting yourself with the Devil of hell and he fathers on you the children which you bear. When the almighty husband that you are married to sees and understands this, that his enemy is committing adultery with you and that you are pregnant by him with the offspring he hates most, he turns you out of doors at once—… (37)
If together the virginity you have meekness and mildness, God is in your heart; but if there is arrogance or any pride there, he is an outlaw from it, for they cannot possibly cohabit in one heart, when they could not live together in heaven. (39)
...a modest wife or meek widow is better than a proud virgin. (39)
Blessed spouse of God, … Adorn your virginity with all the good qualities which he finds attractive. (41)
If God wishes to crown you, he will certainly let the Devil attack you so that you may earn a victor’s crown by it. (43)
There were still in those days many more infidels than there are now, who worshipped and honoured heathen idols, wretched things made out of stone and wood. But I, a servant of God, Teochimus by name, learned in God’s law, have read and interpreted many kinds of writings, and could never find anywhere any who were worthy to be given the worship that we owe to God, except for one alone, the supreme Saviour… (Saint Margaret; In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, here begins the Life and Passion of St Margaret, 45)
I…was living at the time that the blessed maiden, Margaret by name, fought with the Devil and his agents on earth, and defeated and destroyed them; and obtained the documents written at the time describing all her passion… (45)
By the time she was fifteen years of age, her mother had gone the way that all people on earth must go, but she had become as time went by more and more dear to the nurse who had weaned her and brought her up; … (47)
So, meekest of the mild, she tended with other maidens out in the fields her foster-mother’s sheep; and heard on every side how Christ’s chosen ones were being put to death for the true faith; and eagerly longed, if it were God’s will, that she might be one of the many people who bore and suffered so much for God. (47)
If happened after a time that the Devil’s own offspring arrived from Asia, travelling to Antioch to worship his idols in the capital city. He was called Olibrius, the governor of that land, and condemned to death all who believed in the living God. One day as he rode out he caught sight of Margaret, this innocent maiden, as she was tending her foster-mother’s sheep out in the fields, and was dazzled by the beauty of her face and figure. He gave a rapid command to his retinue: ‘Seize her at once! If she is a free woman, I will take her to wife, to have and to hold; and if she is a slave, I will make her my mistress, and give her her freedom… (47)
The knights, on hearing this, all turned back, and said to their lord: ‘This maiden may not be raised to your rank, since she worships none of our heathen gods, but believes in the Lord whom the Jews judged and put to death, … When the cruel Olibrius heard these words, his countenance darkened, … he questioned her as follows: … The wicked man was goaded to fury by these words, and commanded that she should be cast into prison until he had had more [49] time to consider how he might best corrupt her virginity; … (51)
Do what I want and worship my idols and you shall be well rewarded, more than the highest in rank in my court, … (51)
Taker her at once,’ he told his executioners. ‘Strip her stark naked and hang her up high, and flog her bare body with biting rods.’ (53)
…angrily ordered that she should be suspended still higher than before, and that her fair flesh should be ripped and torn with a sharp sword and with hooks of iron. (55)
While she spoke, she was being so lacerated that neither the cruel governor nor anyone else there could bear to look at her, so great was their horror at the torrents of blood that streamed from her; … (55)
He commanded them on pain of death to cast her into prison, and this they did at once. And so she was taken, about the seventh hour of the day, down to the darkest and worst of the dungeons; and she raised up her hand and blessed her whole body with the sign of the holy cross. (57)
My own natural father rejected me and drove me away, his only daughter, and my friends are my enemies and hostile towards me because of your love, Lord; but I see you, Saviour, as both father and friend. Do not abandoned me, living Lord. (57)
One of the people who cared for her was her foster-mother, who came to the dungeon and brought her food, the break and spring water that kept her alive. Now this woman and many others were watching through a window as she said her prayers; and suddenly out of a corner there came towards her a fiend from hell in the form of a dragon, so dreadful they were aghast at the sight of that horror. (59)
He began to close in on this gentle maiden, and threateningly opened his jaws above her, and started to stretch the arch over his neck as if he were about to swallow her whole. If she was afraid of that hideous monster, it was hardly surprising! Her face grew pale with the terror that seized her, and she was so frightened she forgot the plea she had made before, to be granted a sight of her unseen foe, and t did not occur to her that her prayer was answered; but at once she fell to her knees on the ground, and raised her hands high towards heaven, and with this prayer she prayed to Christ: ‘Invisible God, … help me, … [59] … I have no strength to resist this suffering except for yours. (59-61)
And then she traced on her body, downwards and then across, the precious sign of the beloved cross that he was raised on. And the dragon rushed at her as she did this, and posed his hideous mouth, cavernously huge, high above her head, and stretched out his tongue to the soles of her feet and tossed her in, swallowing her into his monstrous belly—but to Christ’s honour and his own destruction. For the sign of the cross that she was armed with swiftly set her free, and brought him sudden death, as his body burst in two in the middle; … As she looked round, she saw sitting on her right a different demon, much blacker than any black man, so grisly, so loathsome, that no one could easily find words to describe it, with both his hands tightly bound to be gnarled knees. And she, when she saw this, began to thank and praise her Saviour… (61)
When she had praised our Lord for so long, that hideous monster came creeping towards her and grasped her by the feet, and, looking most abject plaintively said: ‘Margaret, maiden, you have done enough to me. Do not torture me any more with the blessed prayers… You have overthrown my brother most terribly and killed the most cunning devil in hell, whom I sent to devour you in the form of a dragon and attack with his great power the virtue of your virginity, and makes sure that your memory would not be kept alive among mankind on earth. You defeated and destroyed him with the holy cross, and are killing me too with the power of the prayers which are so often on your lips. But leave me and let me go, lady, I beg you.’ / The gentle maiden Margaret seized that frightful creature, who frightened her not at all, and grasped him firmly by his hideous hair and swung him upwards and threw him down again straight to the ground, and set her right on his rough neck and addressed him as [63] follows: ‘Now stop it, you wretched and pestilent creature; it is high time you gave up tormenting me, you treacherous black devil, because of my virginity; … she stamped hard with her foot on the demon at every sentence: ‘Now stop disturbing me, you evil spirit. Now stop attacking: ‘Now stop disturbing me, you evil spirit. Now stop attacking Christ’s chosen ones, you age-old murderer. (65)
While she spoke in this way to the horrible creature, a light from heaven descended into the dungeon; and she seemed to see in the dazzling brightness the precious cross reaching to heaven; and a dove perched on it and said these words to her: ‘Margaret, you are a blessed maiden, for now the gates of Paradise are opened ready for you.’ (65)
The light dimmed a little, and then she turned round and spoke to the demon. ‘Tell me at once,’ she said, ‘foulest of all things, what your nature is.’ / Lady,’ he said, ‘then lift your foot from my neck, … I will be forced—though much against my will—to do what you want.’ / The gentle maiden did this; she raised her heel and relaxed it a little, and he began to speak in his uncouth way: ‘Do you want to know, lovely lady, what my name is? But no matter what it is, I have been the destruction of more men than anyone but Beelzebub himself, … You are holding me in bonds, and have blinded me here; and have killed my brother Ruffin,… (65)
And with this he began to cry out and howl: ‘Margaret, maiden, what will become of me? My weapons—alas!—have all been overcome. Now if it had been a man—but it is by a maiden! (71)
But if you must know, we live in the air for the most part, blessed maiden, and the ways that we travel are up among the winds; and we are always on the watch to work all the harm we can to mankind, … (73)
‘Be quiet!’ she said, ‘Quiet, you pestilent wretch! I will not allow you to argue with me any more, ancient demon; but flee, miserable fiend, out of my sight, and fall headlong to the place where you can do no more harm to anyone.’ And as she spoke the earth split open and swallowed him, and he fell howling backwards into hell. (73)
In the morning Olibrius the cruel dispatched his men to bring her before him; and she made the sign of the cross and came boldly out. People streamed in from every street to see the suffering that was to be inflicted on her lovely body if she did not submit to the prefect’s wishes. (75)
He began to be angry, and furiously cried, ‘Strip her stark naked and raise her up high, so she may hang as payment for her insults, and burn her body with lighted tapers.’ / The wretched menials did so at once, so that the snow-white skin blackened as it was scorched, and broke into blisters as it swelled all over, and her beautiful body crackled in the flame, so that there was an outcry from all those who saw the pitiful injury to her soft sides. (75)
Then he became mad with fury, and angrily ordered that a vessel [75] full of water should be brought out, and that she should be bound both hand and foot and thrown to the bottom, so she should suffer death and be drowned in its depths. / It was done as he ordered; and she looked up on high and cried to heaven:—‘King of all kings, break my bonds, so that I and all who see it may praise and honour you. May this water become pleasant and mild to me, and grant that it may be for me a bath of bliss and baptism from the font, sanctification and light of eternal salvation. May the Holy Ghost come in the form of a dove to bless these waters in your blessed name. (75-77)
She had only just said this when all the earth started to quake and tremble. And a dove came bearing a golden crown, as bright as if it burned, and settled on that blessed maiden’s head. At this her bonds were broken and shattered; and she, as bright as the shining sun, came out of her water singing a song of praise… (77)
‘Come’, said the dove in a ringing voice, ‘and ascend to the joy and the bliss of heaven. (77)
At the time this happened five thousand men were converted to our Lord, and this not counting women and children; and all of them were, as the governor commanded, beheaded at once in Christ’s royal name, in a city of Armenia called Caplimet, … (77)
The governor reddened with the fury that he felt, and became so madly angry that, quite in a frenzy, he condemned her to death; and in the heat of passion ordered that her head should be severed from her body… (77)
Whoever builds a chapel or church in my name, or provides for it any light or lamp, give him and grant him, Lord, the light of heaven. In the house where a woman is lying in labour, as soon as she recalls my name and my passion, Lord, make haste to help her and listen to her prayer; and may no deformed child be born in that house, neither lame nor hunchbacked, neither dumb nor deaf nor afflicted by the Devil. (79)
At this there came what sounded like a clap of thunder; and a dove came down from heaven, as bright as if it burned, with a cross shining with light and radiance, and the maiden fell headlong down to the ground. And the dove came and touched her and raised her up with the cross, and said to her gently with the sweetest of voice, ‘You are blessed, maiden, … (79)
The voice ceased, and she stood up, most joyful of maidens, and began to tell those who were standing around her and lamenting her death that they should be patient. ‘Now leave off your dreadful outcry,’… (81)
After this prayer she bowed her neck and said to the executioner, ‘Now, brother, quickly carry out your orders.’ [81] ‘No,’ he said, ‘I will not, because I have heard how God’s beloved voice has spoken to you.’ / ‘You have no choice’, said the maiden, ‘but to do it; because if you do not, you will not share with me in the kingdom of heaven.’ / And then he lifted up the cruelest of all weapons, and struck sharply down, ... (83)
I, Teochimus, came and took away her beautiful body, and brought it back again to the city of Antioch with great rejoicing, and laid it in a sarcophagus in the house of her grandmother, who was called Clete. Indeed I ought to know all this, for I, during the time of her sufferings in prison, supplied her with provisions… (83)
The house which our Lord is talking about is man himself. Inside, man’s reason is master in this house, and Will can be described as the unruly wife, who, if the household follows her lead, reduces it to chaos, unless Reason as master disciplines her better, and often deprives her of much she would like. (The Custody of the Soul; In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, ‘The Custody of the Soul’ begins here, 87)
And what are these servants? Some are outside and some are inside. The outer servants are man’s five senses—sight and hearing, taste and smell, and sensation in every part of the body. These are subject to Reason, as the head of the household, and wherever he is negligent, there is not one of them who does not often behave in an unruly way and frequently offend, by an impudent manner or by criminal acts. His inner servants plot in all kinds of ways to please the housewife against God’s will, and swear with one voice that things shall go as she wants them to. … Because of these servants, his house will never be properly guarded if he falls asleep or travels anywhere away from home—that is, when man forgets his reason and lets them be. (87)
Reason…Our Lord has lent him the aid of his daughters, who are to be understood as the four cardinal virtues. The first is called Prudence, and the second has the name of Spiritual Fortitude, and the third is Temperance; Justice is the fourth. (89)
Reason the husband, whom God has made the commander of the stronghold, hears all their speeches and thanks God earnestly with a daughters of God, whom he has lent him as a help to guard and defend his castle well, and God’s precious treasure which is locked up inside. The willful housewife remains quite silent, and all the household that she was used to attracting as followers transfer their loyalty to Reason their lord and to these four sisters. (99)
‘Cast out our enemy Fear!’ says Prudence. ‘It is not right that one house should hold these two; for where Joy’s messenger is, and the true Love of eternal Life, Fear is put to flight.’ / ‘Now out, Fear!’ says Fortitude. ‘You are not to stay with us any longer.’ (107)
Now Will the housewife, who was formerly so willful, is entirely subdued, completely directed by the guidance of Reason, who is master of the house; … (107)
St Paul … if I give away all my goods to feed the poor, but do not have charity, it is useless to me. (Guide for Anchoresses, Part 7, 111)
A lady was completely surrounded by her enemies, her land laid waste, and she herself quite destitute, in a castle of clay. But a powerful king had fallen in love with her so inordinately that to win her love he sent his messengers, one after another,… he sent her many splendid presents of jewellery, provisions to support [113] her, help form his noble army to hold her castle. She accepted everything as if it meant nothing to her, … At last he came himself; showed her his handsome face, … offered to make her queen…she was never fit to be his maidservant. … I know for certain that in fighting them I shall receive a mortal wound; and I will accept it gladly in order to win your heart. … I beg you… love me at least when this is done, after my death, although you refused to during my life.’ This king did just as he had promised; he rescued her from all her enemies, … Would not this lady have a base nature if she did not love him after this above all things? / This king is Jesus… showed by feats of arms that he was worthy of love, as was the custom of knights once upon a time. He entered the tournament and, like a bold knight, had his shield pierced through and through in battle for love of his lady. (113-115)
‘But, master,’ you say, ‘what was the point? Could he not have saved us without so much suffering?’ Yes, indeed, very easily; but he did not wish to. Why? To deprive us of any excuse for denying him our love, since he had paid so dearly for it. (117)
…the crucifix—is placed in church where it can be seen most easily, to be a reminder of the knightly prowess of Jesus Christ on the cross. His beloved should see in this how he bought her love: he let his shield be pierced, his side opened up, to show her his heart, to show her openly how deeply he loved her, and to attract her heart. (117)
There is often great love between a man and a woman. But even if she were married to him, she might become so depraved, and might prostitute herself with other men for such a long time that, even she wanted to come back to him, he would have nothing to do with her. Christ, then, loves more than this: … (117)
For as St Augustine says, there is so much difference—that is, between God’s advances to a woman and a man’s—that a man’s advances make a virgin into a woman, and God makes a woman into a virgin. (119)
Now something about the third love. If a child had such an illness that it needed a bath of blood before it could be healed, the mother who was willing to provide this bath for it would love it very much. Our Lord did this for us— (119)
‘If you are so very stubborn, and so out of your senses, that for fear of losing anything you reject such a gain, with every kind of happiness, look! I am holding a cruel sword here above your head to separate body and soul, and plunge them both into the fire of hell, to be the Devil’s [121] whore there in shame and misery for all eternity. Now answer and defend yourself—if you can—against me; or grant me your love which I long for so much, not for my sake, but for your own great advantage.’ / This, you see, is how our Lord woos. (121-123)
Greek fire is made from the blood of a red man, and nothing can [123] extinguish it, so they say, but urine and sand and vinegar. This Greek fire is the love of Jesus our Lord, who was reddened with his own blood on the precious cross—and was, it is thought, naturally red in complexion. … this love which, as Solomon says, cannot be quenched by any waters (which are earthly tribulations) or any temptations, either inner or outer. Now all that remains is to guard yourself carefully against everything which quenches it: that is, urine and sand and vinegar, as I said before. Urine is the stench of sin. Nothing good grows on sand, and it stands for idleness. Idleness cools this fire and puts it out. … vinegar—that is, a heart sour with envy or hatred. (123-125)
The urine, as I said, which extinguishes Greek fire is stinking carnal love, which extinguishes the spiritual love which is signified by Greek fire. (127)
I said earlier, at the beginning, that you should not commit yourselves to keeping any of the outer rules by a vow; I say the same now. And I am not writing them for anyone apart from you. I mention this so that other recluses may not claim that I am presuming to lay down a new Rule for them. I do not ask that they should observe them, and even you may change them for better ones whenever you wish. Compared with the matters dealt with earlier, they are of little importance. (Guide for Anchoresses, Part 8, 131)
People care less about what they have often. For this reason you should take Communion, as our brothers do, only fifteen times a year: … In preparation for all these, make a full confession and receive the discipline—but never from anyone apart from yourselves— … (131)
From Easter until the second feast of the Holy Cross, which falls in the autumn, you should eat twice every day except for the Fridays and Ember Days, Rogation Days and vigils. On these days and in Advent you should not eat dairy produce unless you have to. For the remaining half of the year you should fast all the time, Sundays only excepted, when you are healthy and have all your strength; but the rule does not apply to those who are ill or have been let blood. / You should not eat meat or fat except in the case of serious illness, or when someone is very weak. (131)
...dear sisters, your [131] food and drink have often seemed to me less than I would like. Do not fast on bread and water on any day unless you have permission. / Sometimes a recluse has a meal with her guest outside her quarters. That is showing too much friendliness, for it goes against the nature of any form of religious life, and most of all that of a recluse, who is utterly dead to the world. (131-133)
Do not give lavish entertainments, or encourage strange beggars to come to the gate. … It is not proper for a recluse to be generous with someone else’s donations. … no recluse should accept more than will supply her needs without excess. So what has she to be generous with? (133)
No man should eat in your presence without your director’s permission, … (135)
You, my dear sisters, unless you are forced by necessity and your director advises you to, must not keep any animal except a cat. A refuse who keeps livestock is more like a housewife, … For this reason, if anyone is forced by need to keep livestock, she should see that it does not cause annoyance or damage to anybody else, and that she is not preoccupied with it. (135)
…she may, on her director’s advice, sell tings she has made to supply her needs. (135)
Nobody should wear linen next to the skin unless it is made of stiff and coarse fibres. Anyone who wishes may wear an undergarment of rough wool; anyone who wishes may do without one. You should sleep in a robe, and wearing a belt, but so loosely fastened that you can put your hands under it. Nobody should wear a belt of any kind next to the skin except with her confessor’s permission, or wear anything made of iron or hair or hedgehog skins, or beat herself with them, or with a scourge weighted with lead, with holly, or with thorns, or draw blood, without her confessor’s permission. (137)
Your shoes in winter should be supple, roomy, and warm. In summer you have permission to go around barefoot and wear light shoes. (137)
Sometimes a woman may wear drawers of haircloth tightly fastened, with the legs firmly cross-gartered down to the feet; but a mild and gentle heart is always best. I would rather have you bear a harsh word well than a harsh hair shirt. (137)
Why, then, do you, as a church-recluse, wear a wimple and leave your face open to a man’s gaze? The apostle is talking about those of you who see men, … (139)
I do not forbid you to make narrow lace borders, if one of you is trimming a surplice or an alb; but she should not make other kinds of trimming, especially over-elaborate ones, unless it is absolutely necessary. (139)
A recluse should not degenerate into a schoolmistress, or turn her cell into a children’s school. Her maid may give instruction to some other girl if it would be undesirable to have her taught with men or boys, but a recluse ought not to devote her attention to anyone other than God… (141)
You should have your hair cropped, or shaved if you wish, four times a year to lighten your head (anyone who prefers may have her hair trimmed); … (141)
Wash yourselves wherever necessary as often as you wish, and your things as well. Filth was never dear to God, although poverty and plainness of dress are pleasing to him. (141)
They should not nibble between meals, either fruit or anything else, or drink without permission; and permission should be easily gained for everything that is not sinful. There should be no talking at meals, or very little and in a low voice. (145)
Read some of this book in your free time every day, whether more or less. I hope that if you read it often it will be of much use to you, through God’s great grace; otherwise I would have wasted the long time I spent on it. As God is my witness, I would rather set out to Rome than start writing again. … Whenever you have read anything in this book, greet Our Lady with a Hail Mary for the man who laboured on it. I am moderate enough in asking for so little. / The End. / Remember your scribe sometimes in your prayers, no matter how little. It will benefit you if you pray for others. (end, 149)
The texts edited in this anthology are all taken from a single group of religious prose works, written in the West Midlands in the early thirteenth century. / The longest of these works, and the best known both in the Middle Ages and today, is the Ancrene Wisse, a work of guidance for female recluses. The ancre—the anchorite or anchoress—was a man or woman who had chosen to be enclosed for life in an individual cell, usually built on to the wall of a church; … (Introduction, xi)
The first eight sections of his work prescribes the recluses’ daily routine of prayers, and the general conduct. But he emphasizes that these recommendations on external behavior, the ‘Outer Rule’, should be seen as no more than a handmaid to its lady, the ‘Inner Rule’—the divine commands governing the heart and conscience—to which he devotes the main body of his work. (xi)
Ancrene Wisse is anonymous, … recent research is pointing increasingly towards Dominican origin. (xi)
It was adapted for nuns, for male religious communities, for laymen, and for a general audience; in a period when translation was normally from Latin or French into English; in a period when tanslation was normally from Latin or French into English, it was translation once into Latin and twice into French; and it continued to be read, copied, and borrowed from into the early sixteenth century. (xii)
…five works—lives of the virgin martyrs Katherine, Margaret, and Juliana, the letter on virginity called by its editors A Letter on Virginity [written in Middle English letters in text], and an allegory on the custody of the soul, Sawles Warde—are collectively described as the ‘Katherine Group’. It is uncertain whether the author of Ancrene Wisse also wrote any or all of these other works. (xii)
Although this group of works can still be read for profit as well as pleasure, there is little that is original about their content. They seem to have been written mainly to make material already available in Latin accessible to an audience whose first—and, in some cases, only—lanugage was English. Some of them, like Sawles Warde and the saints’ lives, are free translation from Latin sources, and even those works, like Ancrene Wisse and A Letter on Virginity, which have no single Latin source are heavily indebted for their material to earlier Latin writers. What is distinctive about them is their treatment of this material. In a period when few good writers chose to write in English, these works show an unexpected literary skill and confidence. Even where they are drawing directly on a Latin source they elaborate and develop it freely, sometimes recreating its stylistic effects in English, more often adding embellishments of their own. This remarkable flowering of English [xiii] prose in a largely barren age was probably the result of a combination of several factors. One major influence was certainly the native tradition of alliterative writing prose and verse, which had survived the Norman Conquest more successfully in the West Midlands than elsewhere. English scholars between the wars tended to emphasize the ‘Englishness’ of the group and its link with Anglo-Saxon culture; … (xiii-xiv)
But the stylistic origins of the group as a whole are more complex, and post-war scholarship has laid greater emphasis on the influence of contemporary French and Latin culture. (xiv)
In early Christian thought, a virginal habit of mind is even more important tha literal intactness (which can be rendered meaningless by the wrong interior disposition). (xv)
The purpose of virginity is to help the soul develop the power of seeing God. It also expresses the pervasive human intuition that a general early state of blessedness has been lost…after the expulsion from Paradise’,… (xv)
Had man been content to replace the angels in God’s creation and not imitate Lucifer’s disobedience, our nature could and should have been like that of the angels. As it is, we are offered a promise of angelic life [xv] only after the resurrection. Virginity, however, offers an earthly approximation… (xv-xvi)
Far from being a life of negation, virginity is the fullest expression of human free will, since, as Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and others insist, virginity is not commanded but counseled by St Paul… (xvi)
In Ancrene Wisse Part 7 Christ is presented (in an allegory alos found elsewhere) as the knightly lover of an ungrateful lady, the soul;… Loss of virginity is presented as selling oneself too cheaply, doing something unworthy. (xvii)
A Letter on Virginity’s arguments are sometimes objected to for being directed towards the self-interest of the virgin, for presenting spiritual rewards as social enticements. … In the heavenly court, the virgin will have the prettiest crown and the most beautiful robes (16/17-19) as well as the dazzling aureola reserved for virgins (20/10-14); the highest social pre-eminence will be hers, … (xvii)
…tower of Zion (a fortification in Jerusalem). By traditional etymology (as explained at 2/26-27) this is a watch-tower (specula) and hence a place for contemplation (sepculatio). The image of virginity as a high state of life becomes a major structural metaphor of this first section, in which A Letter on Virginity concentrates less on the virgin’s powers of contemplating God from her exalted position than on establishing that the sole direction in which one can move away from [xviii] virginity is downwards. (xviii-xix)
Many of its observations on household drudgery and martial bickering come ultimately from the arguments of Paul and Jerome. (xix)
The vivid and detailed account of the miseries of motherhood also uses an established tradition—that of contempt of the world. This is given powerful expression in a probable source of A Letter on Virginity, Pope Innocent III’s treatise, On the Misery of the Human Condition (completed in 1195). For Innocent, as for Augustine, the post-lapsarian sexual act is inevitably tainted to a greater or lesser degree with lust and the human child is ‘conceived therefore with lasciviousness and filth, brought forth with sorrow and pain, nourished with trouble and labour, watched over with anxiety and fear. [M. Maccarrone (ed.), De miseria humanae conditiones (Verona, 1955), Bk. 1, ch. 6, ss 2, pp. 13-14; and see Millett, A Letter on Virginity, 17/3-6 n.] (xix)
Like its Katherine Group sister-legends of St Katherine of Alexandria and St Juliana of Nicomedia, Seinte Margarete takes a virgin martyr for its [xx] heroine. … all set in the Diocletian persecutions of the early fourth century in exotic locales in Asia Minor. All three saints are either entirely legendary martyrs or have only dubious traces of genuine early cults. They are presented as brides of Christ, interrogated and tortured by tyrant officials who want them to abandon both their virginity and their faith. (xx-xxi)
In no virgin-martyr passio does the tyrant simply rape the saint; the official focus of these narratives is upon the conquest of wills between the tormentor and the virgin. (xxiii)
While Margaret’s emotions are vividly realized, they are not used to define her as an individual but to demonstrate exemplary responses. [xxiii] As in many medieval saints’ lives, there is no attempt at realistic characterization; the saint is not a psychologically complex figure, vulnerable to doubts and inner conflicts, but is idealized to the point of impersonality. Margaret can feel fear (58/23-7), but not uncertainty, and her desire for God, stated firmly at the outset (46/9-17), can only be confirmed, not developed, in the course of the narrative. (xxiii-xxiv)
Similarly, the power and ornateness of Margaret’s prayer does not express her sensibility but the majesty of God. Their psalm-based imagery is vivid, visual, and yet formulaic, … (xxiv)
Though heresies within Christianity and Islamic conquests from without were part of European experience at the time of Seinte Margarete’s composition, the legend is designed to reinforce faith rather than to combat paganism. (xxiv)
…Sawles Warde treats the human being allegorically, in this case as a household under the overlordship of God and open to unrest within the attack from without…metaphor of the human being as building comes from a long [xxv] tradition with many medieval examples…The master of the house is Reason (‘Wit’ in early Middle English 86/9), who, in the customary hierarchical conception of marriage, must control his unruly wife Will and the household servants who all too readily enjoy her indiscipline (86/9-13). (xxv-xxvi)
…the cardinal virtue become, in Sawles Warde’s selectively expanded treatment, the four daughters of God, lent to Wit as officers of the household, to help him guard God’s treasure, the soul. Twelfth- and thirteenth-century theorists agree as to the qualities and usually as to the hierarchy of these virtues, but they are seldom seen as God’s daughters, … The relationship of the four daughters becomes a working interdependence, a model of female co-operation and mutual esteem … (xxviii)
…the reclusive life, austere and extreme as it was, was not of its nature the refuge of the marginal of the desperate, but a carefully regulated institution, under strict Episcopal supervision, not permitted without previous adequate financial arrangements, and a favourite object of both aristocratic patronage and charitable donation from other social classes. Thirteenth-century recluses were often high-born and influential ladies, like the sisters for whom Ancrene Wisse was originally written, but village recluses of more humble origin were also admired and supported by their communities. (xxx)
Both the ingenuity of some of the metaphors and the author’s tendency to present his arguments as a series of methodically numbered points—the four chief loves, the three components of a shield, the three baths—suggest that the audience is being encouraged not only to feel but to reflect and remember. (xxxii)
The ‘Outer Rule’ in the Corpus version has been heavily revised. …and marginal additions in another hand, probably the author’s own, … [xxxiii] the general tendency of his alterations is to discourage excessive asceticism. His recluses must…be less inhibited about asking benefactors for what they need (some restrictions on this are deleted in 134/13-17). They should fast only when in good health (130/28-9), pay more attention to personal hygiene…, and not see their necessary detachment from the world as a justification for in hospitality or rudeness to visitors… (xxxiii-xxxiv)
Sawles Warde, A Letter on Virginity, and Ancrene Wisse also draw to some extent on the native alliterative tradition; the influence is strongest in Sawles Warde, least obvious in Ancrene Wisse, which was probably the latest written of the group. (xxxvi)
To some extent there is a correlation between diction and style: the works which are closest to the native alliterative have the lowest proportion of borrowings from Latin and French, and Cecily Clark comments, ‘Although Romance loanwords could be and were used to make alliterative phrases…a writer using traditional alliterative style must often have been led by the semi-formulaic phraseology conventional with this style traditional choice of words.’ (xxxviii)
The style of this group of works cannot be fully appreciated unless we remember that they were written to be heard as well as read. Both of the major influences on their style, the native technique of alliterative writing and the devices of Latin rhetoric, were methods largely designed to produce verbal symmetries and echoes which would appeal directly to the ear. While the works were intended at least partly for an audience of recluses, and must sometimes have been used for solitary study, even this kind of reading in the Middle Ages was rarely silent; and both the scarcity and expense of manuscripts and the limitations of literacy meant that medieval works usually had a larger audience of hearers than readers. (xxxviii)
Listen, daughter, and behold, and incline your ear; and forget your people and your father’s house. David the psalmist is speaking in the Psalter to the bride of God—that is, every virgin who has the virtues of virginity—and he says: ‘Hear me, daughter, behold and incline your ear; and forget your people and your father’s house.’ (beginning, A Letter on Virginity; A letter on virginity for the encouragement of virgins, 3)
‘Zion’ was once the name of the high tower of Jerusalem; and ‘Zion’ corresponds to ‘high vision’ in English. And this tower signifies the high state of virginity, … (3)
But the people of Babylon that I mentioned before, the army of the Devil of hell, who are carnal lusts and the fiend’s temptation, constantly make war on this tower and attack it, … such honour as it is to be God’s spouse, the bride of Jesus Christ, … and from being God’s bride and his free daughter (for she is both together) becomes a serf to a man and his slave, to do and suffer all that he pleases, … (5)
Our Lord is so generous that he does not wish his chosen ones to be ones to be without reward here in this world; for there is so much comfort in his grace that all they see pleases them, and though it may seem to other people that they have much to bear, it does not trouble them but seem easy to them, and though it may seem to other people that they have much to bear, it does not trouble them but seems easy to them, and they have more delight in it than anyone else would in worldly pleasure. (7)
Therefore, innocent maiden, forget your people as David tells you to: that is, put away the thoughts which stir your heart through physical desires, … (9)
…that disgusting act, that animal union, that shameless coupling, that stinking and wanton deed, full of filthiness. (It is, nevertheless, to be tolerated to some extent within marriage, as you will hear later.) If you ask why God created such a thing, but Adam and Eve perverted it through their sin and corrupted our nature, … (9)
Constantly pray for his grace; and overcome with its help that weak nature which draws so many into servitude, and casts them foully into filth. (9)
And the king will desire your beauty. ‘And then’, says David, ‘the king will desire your beauty,’ the king of all kings desire you as a lover. And you then, blessed maiden, who are assigned to him with the mark of virginity, do not break that seal which seals you both together. (9)
Virginity is the one gift granted to you from heaven; if you once dispose of it, you will never regain another quite like it. For virginity is the queen of heaven, and the world’s redemption through which we are saved, a virtue above all virtues, and most pleasing of all to Christ. (11)
Angel and maiden are equal in virtue through the power of virginity, though as yet their degrees of blessedness divide them; and though their virginity is more blessed now, yours is more difficult to keep intact, and will be recompensed by a greater reward. (11)
…as you stand higher, be more greatly afraid of falling; for the higher the degree, the worse the fall. The envious Devil sees you have climbed so high towards heaven through the virtue of virginity, which is the most hateful of virtues to him; … (13)
…the more strongly you stand against him, the more furiously he attacks out of chagrin and rage; because it seems to him so much the more shameful to be overcome, that something as weak as flesh is—and especially a woman’s—should be able to surpass him. (13)
Every carnal impulse and lecherous desire which arises in your heart is the Devil’s arrow; but it does not wound you unless it is lodged in you, and remains so long that you wish your desire could be acted out. (13)
And observe carefully why: our physical desire is the Devil’s offspring; our reason is God’s daughter; and both are within us. So here there is always conflict, and must always be of necessity, because fighting between them will never cease while we live in this world. But it is well for whoever follows Reason, God’s daughter, because she sides with Virginity, who is her sister; but, on the other hand, your desire for that physical pleasure sides with Lechery, who is the Devil’s offspring as she is, and Sin her mother. (15)
Virginity never revives after that wound. Oh, whoever saw then how the angels are distressed to see their sister so dreadfully overthrown, and the devils capering and clapping their hands together, laughing raucously, his heart would be stony if it did not melt in tears! (15)
Guard yourself, innocent maidens. They say that opportunity makes a thief; flee all those things, and avoid them earnestly, from which such irremediable loss may arise. (15)
Who could wish for more? The eunuch who keeps my sabbaths, etc. Who can imagine the happiness, the joy and the bliss, the glory of the reward which this short sentence contains? ‘I shall’, he says, ‘give them a place and a better name than sons and daughters.’ (17)
…the promise that they are given to sing with angels—whose equals they are through their heavenly way of life, while they are still living in the flesh on earth—to sing that sweet song and that angelic melody, surpassingly joyful, that no saint who is not a virgin may sing in heaven; and to follow God almighty, full of every good, wherever he goes, as the others may not, though they are all his sons and all his daughters. And none of these others’ crowns, nor their beauty, nor their robes, can equal theirs, they are so incomparably bright and shining to look at. (17)
And those who are in heaven sing the praises of God, to thank him for his grace and for his kindness. The married thank him because at least, when they were in danger of falling headlong, they did not fall all the way, for marriage saved them, that law which God has established for the weak. (17)
…virginity, which God does not command, but recommends to whoever wants to be among the small number of his best-loved friends, … (19)
…if it were commanded and then not kept, the breach would be mortal sin. It was for this reason that marriage was made lawful within Holy Church, as a bed for the sick, to catch the weak who cannot stand on the high hill… (19)
For if anyone falls from the honour of virginity so that the mattress of wedlock does not catch them, … must sing a song of lamentation for evermore in hell, unless repentance should bring them back to life… For if they are revived and made whole in this way, they are in the rank of widows, and will sing in the circle of widows before the married in heaven. (19)
And all who rejoice in heaven are crowned with a victor’s crown; but the virgins have, over and above what is common to all alike, a circlet shining brighter than the sun, called aureola in Latin. As for the flowers which are engraved on it, and the inset jewels, no one could find the words to describe what they are like. (21)
[marriage] It is entirely for this reason, or partly for it—now admit the truth—to cool your lust by the defilement of your body, to satisfy your carnal desire through intercourse with a man? By God, it is disgusting to think about it, and even more disgusting to talk about it; … (23)
…a great deal more loathsome than anyone well-bred can decently describe, what makes it popular among brutish men but their viciousness, which draws them on like animals to all that gives them pleasure, … (23)
…animals mate naturally, although they lack reason, at one time of the year. Many confine themselves to a single mate, and after losing that one will never take another. And man, who should have reason and do all that he did with its consent, pursues that filthiness at all times, and takes one after another; and many, which is worse, take many together. (23)
…a man’s strength is worth a great deal, and I need his help for support and food. Worldly wealth springs from the union of man and wife, and a brood of fine [25] children who give much happiness to their parents.’ Now you have made this claim, and it looks as if what you say is true; but I shall show that it is all glossed over with falsehood. (23-25)
You say that a wife has much happiness from her husband when they are well matched, and each is pleased with the other in every way. Yes—but it is seldom seen in this world. And even supposing they do have such happiness and such delight, what does the greatest part consist in but carnal filthiness or worldly vanity, which all turns to sorrow and pain in the end? … the greater their happiness was together, the more intense is the grief at parting. Woe to him, therefore (as St Augustine says), who is attached with too much love to any earthly thing; … (25)
You spoke above of a man’s help towards maintenance and food. Come now! You have little need to worry about your own support, a modest maiden as you are, and the dear beloved of him who is Lord of all things, that he cannot easily—and that he will not gladly—provide you generously with all that you need. And even supposing you did suffer want or endured any hardship for his precious love, as the others do for man’s, he allows it for your own good, to test whether you are faithful, and prepares your reward in heaven many times over. (25)
[money] They gain it with misery, they guard it with fear, they lose it with grief; … (27)
And what if…you do not have your heart’s desire with him, or riches either, and must pine away in poverty between bare walls, and bring forth your children to lack of bread; and besides this, be subject to a husband you hate, so that even if you had every kind of wealth he would turn it into misery for you? (27)
When he is out, you are filled with anxiety and fear of his homecoming. While he is at home, all your wide halls seem to you too narrow. His attention makes you nervous; his detestable clamour and his ill-bred shouting frighten you. He rails at you and scolds you and abuses you shamefully, treats you disgracefully as a lecher does his whore, beats you and thrashes you like his bought slave and his born serf. Your bones aches and your flesh smarts, your heart within you swells with violent rage, and your outward countenance burns with anger. What will your relations in bed be like? But those who love each other best often differ there, although they may give no sign in the morning; and often, however much they love one another, each gives bitter offence to the other in many small matters when they are on their own. She must often submit to his will much against her own will, in great distress; and especially in bed she must put up with all his indecencies and his improper games, however obscenely devised, whether she wants to or not. May Christ protect every maiden from asking or wanting to know what they are; fro those who have most experience of them find them most loathsome, and call those woman happy indeed who have no idea what they might be, and detest what they are doing. (29)
If she cannot have children [29] she is called barren; her lord loves her and honours her less, … (29-31)
…in carrying it there is heaviness and constant discomfort; in giving birth to it, the cruelest of all pains, and sometimes death; in bringing it up, many weary hours. As soon as it comes into this life, it brings more anxiety with it than joy, especially to the mother. For if it is born handicapped, as often happens, and one of its limbs is missing or has some kind of defect, it is a grief to her and shame to all its family,… If it is born healthy and seems to promise well, fear of its loss is born along with it, … (31)
By God, woman, even if it were not at all for the love of God, or for the hope of heaven, or for the fear of hell, you should avoid this act above all things, for the integrity of your flesh, for the sake of your body, and for your physical health. (31)
[pregnancy] Your rosy face will grow thin, and turn green as grass; your eyes will grow dull, and shadowed underneath, and because of your dizziness your head will ache cruelly. (31)
…when she comes in, hears her child screaming, sees the cat at the flitch and the dog at the hide, her loaf burning on the hearth and her calf sucking, the pot boiling over into the fire—and her husband is complaining? (35)
Blessed is his spouse, whose virginity is unblemished when he begets offspring on her, and who, when she bears children by him, does not labour or suffer. Blessed is the husband, when no woman can be a virgin unless she loves him, or free unless she serves him, whose offspring is immortal and whose marriage gift is the kingdom of heaven. (35)
If you would like children, devote yourself to him with whom you shall, in your virginity, give birth to spiritual sons and daughters, who can never die but will play before you for ever in heaven, which are the virtues that he engenders in you through his sweet grace; … (37)
But, maiden, although you may have physical integrity, if you have pride, envy, or anger, avarice or weakness of will in your heart, you are prostituting yourself with the Devil of hell and he fathers on you the children which you bear. When the almighty husband that you are married to sees and understands this, that his enemy is committing adultery with you and that you are pregnant by him with the offspring he hates most, he turns you out of doors at once—… (37)
If together the virginity you have meekness and mildness, God is in your heart; but if there is arrogance or any pride there, he is an outlaw from it, for they cannot possibly cohabit in one heart, when they could not live together in heaven. (39)
...a modest wife or meek widow is better than a proud virgin. (39)
Blessed spouse of God, … Adorn your virginity with all the good qualities which he finds attractive. (41)
If God wishes to crown you, he will certainly let the Devil attack you so that you may earn a victor’s crown by it. (43)
There were still in those days many more infidels than there are now, who worshipped and honoured heathen idols, wretched things made out of stone and wood. But I, a servant of God, Teochimus by name, learned in God’s law, have read and interpreted many kinds of writings, and could never find anywhere any who were worthy to be given the worship that we owe to God, except for one alone, the supreme Saviour… (Saint Margaret; In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, here begins the Life and Passion of St Margaret, 45)
I…was living at the time that the blessed maiden, Margaret by name, fought with the Devil and his agents on earth, and defeated and destroyed them; and obtained the documents written at the time describing all her passion… (45)
By the time she was fifteen years of age, her mother had gone the way that all people on earth must go, but she had become as time went by more and more dear to the nurse who had weaned her and brought her up; … (47)
So, meekest of the mild, she tended with other maidens out in the fields her foster-mother’s sheep; and heard on every side how Christ’s chosen ones were being put to death for the true faith; and eagerly longed, if it were God’s will, that she might be one of the many people who bore and suffered so much for God. (47)
If happened after a time that the Devil’s own offspring arrived from Asia, travelling to Antioch to worship his idols in the capital city. He was called Olibrius, the governor of that land, and condemned to death all who believed in the living God. One day as he rode out he caught sight of Margaret, this innocent maiden, as she was tending her foster-mother’s sheep out in the fields, and was dazzled by the beauty of her face and figure. He gave a rapid command to his retinue: ‘Seize her at once! If she is a free woman, I will take her to wife, to have and to hold; and if she is a slave, I will make her my mistress, and give her her freedom… (47)
The knights, on hearing this, all turned back, and said to their lord: ‘This maiden may not be raised to your rank, since she worships none of our heathen gods, but believes in the Lord whom the Jews judged and put to death, … When the cruel Olibrius heard these words, his countenance darkened, … he questioned her as follows: … The wicked man was goaded to fury by these words, and commanded that she should be cast into prison until he had had more [49] time to consider how he might best corrupt her virginity; … (51)
Do what I want and worship my idols and you shall be well rewarded, more than the highest in rank in my court, … (51)
Taker her at once,’ he told his executioners. ‘Strip her stark naked and hang her up high, and flog her bare body with biting rods.’ (53)
…angrily ordered that she should be suspended still higher than before, and that her fair flesh should be ripped and torn with a sharp sword and with hooks of iron. (55)
While she spoke, she was being so lacerated that neither the cruel governor nor anyone else there could bear to look at her, so great was their horror at the torrents of blood that streamed from her; … (55)
He commanded them on pain of death to cast her into prison, and this they did at once. And so she was taken, about the seventh hour of the day, down to the darkest and worst of the dungeons; and she raised up her hand and blessed her whole body with the sign of the holy cross. (57)
My own natural father rejected me and drove me away, his only daughter, and my friends are my enemies and hostile towards me because of your love, Lord; but I see you, Saviour, as both father and friend. Do not abandoned me, living Lord. (57)
One of the people who cared for her was her foster-mother, who came to the dungeon and brought her food, the break and spring water that kept her alive. Now this woman and many others were watching through a window as she said her prayers; and suddenly out of a corner there came towards her a fiend from hell in the form of a dragon, so dreadful they were aghast at the sight of that horror. (59)
He began to close in on this gentle maiden, and threateningly opened his jaws above her, and started to stretch the arch over his neck as if he were about to swallow her whole. If she was afraid of that hideous monster, it was hardly surprising! Her face grew pale with the terror that seized her, and she was so frightened she forgot the plea she had made before, to be granted a sight of her unseen foe, and t did not occur to her that her prayer was answered; but at once she fell to her knees on the ground, and raised her hands high towards heaven, and with this prayer she prayed to Christ: ‘Invisible God, … help me, … [59] … I have no strength to resist this suffering except for yours. (59-61)
And then she traced on her body, downwards and then across, the precious sign of the beloved cross that he was raised on. And the dragon rushed at her as she did this, and posed his hideous mouth, cavernously huge, high above her head, and stretched out his tongue to the soles of her feet and tossed her in, swallowing her into his monstrous belly—but to Christ’s honour and his own destruction. For the sign of the cross that she was armed with swiftly set her free, and brought him sudden death, as his body burst in two in the middle; … As she looked round, she saw sitting on her right a different demon, much blacker than any black man, so grisly, so loathsome, that no one could easily find words to describe it, with both his hands tightly bound to be gnarled knees. And she, when she saw this, began to thank and praise her Saviour… (61)
When she had praised our Lord for so long, that hideous monster came creeping towards her and grasped her by the feet, and, looking most abject plaintively said: ‘Margaret, maiden, you have done enough to me. Do not torture me any more with the blessed prayers… You have overthrown my brother most terribly and killed the most cunning devil in hell, whom I sent to devour you in the form of a dragon and attack with his great power the virtue of your virginity, and makes sure that your memory would not be kept alive among mankind on earth. You defeated and destroyed him with the holy cross, and are killing me too with the power of the prayers which are so often on your lips. But leave me and let me go, lady, I beg you.’ / The gentle maiden Margaret seized that frightful creature, who frightened her not at all, and grasped him firmly by his hideous hair and swung him upwards and threw him down again straight to the ground, and set her right on his rough neck and addressed him as [63] follows: ‘Now stop it, you wretched and pestilent creature; it is high time you gave up tormenting me, you treacherous black devil, because of my virginity; … she stamped hard with her foot on the demon at every sentence: ‘Now stop disturbing me, you evil spirit. Now stop attacking: ‘Now stop disturbing me, you evil spirit. Now stop attacking Christ’s chosen ones, you age-old murderer. (65)
While she spoke in this way to the horrible creature, a light from heaven descended into the dungeon; and she seemed to see in the dazzling brightness the precious cross reaching to heaven; and a dove perched on it and said these words to her: ‘Margaret, you are a blessed maiden, for now the gates of Paradise are opened ready for you.’ (65)
The light dimmed a little, and then she turned round and spoke to the demon. ‘Tell me at once,’ she said, ‘foulest of all things, what your nature is.’ / Lady,’ he said, ‘then lift your foot from my neck, … I will be forced—though much against my will—to do what you want.’ / The gentle maiden did this; she raised her heel and relaxed it a little, and he began to speak in his uncouth way: ‘Do you want to know, lovely lady, what my name is? But no matter what it is, I have been the destruction of more men than anyone but Beelzebub himself, … You are holding me in bonds, and have blinded me here; and have killed my brother Ruffin,… (65)
And with this he began to cry out and howl: ‘Margaret, maiden, what will become of me? My weapons—alas!—have all been overcome. Now if it had been a man—but it is by a maiden! (71)
But if you must know, we live in the air for the most part, blessed maiden, and the ways that we travel are up among the winds; and we are always on the watch to work all the harm we can to mankind, … (73)
‘Be quiet!’ she said, ‘Quiet, you pestilent wretch! I will not allow you to argue with me any more, ancient demon; but flee, miserable fiend, out of my sight, and fall headlong to the place where you can do no more harm to anyone.’ And as she spoke the earth split open and swallowed him, and he fell howling backwards into hell. (73)
In the morning Olibrius the cruel dispatched his men to bring her before him; and she made the sign of the cross and came boldly out. People streamed in from every street to see the suffering that was to be inflicted on her lovely body if she did not submit to the prefect’s wishes. (75)
He began to be angry, and furiously cried, ‘Strip her stark naked and raise her up high, so she may hang as payment for her insults, and burn her body with lighted tapers.’ / The wretched menials did so at once, so that the snow-white skin blackened as it was scorched, and broke into blisters as it swelled all over, and her beautiful body crackled in the flame, so that there was an outcry from all those who saw the pitiful injury to her soft sides. (75)
Then he became mad with fury, and angrily ordered that a vessel [75] full of water should be brought out, and that she should be bound both hand and foot and thrown to the bottom, so she should suffer death and be drowned in its depths. / It was done as he ordered; and she looked up on high and cried to heaven:—‘King of all kings, break my bonds, so that I and all who see it may praise and honour you. May this water become pleasant and mild to me, and grant that it may be for me a bath of bliss and baptism from the font, sanctification and light of eternal salvation. May the Holy Ghost come in the form of a dove to bless these waters in your blessed name. (75-77)
She had only just said this when all the earth started to quake and tremble. And a dove came bearing a golden crown, as bright as if it burned, and settled on that blessed maiden’s head. At this her bonds were broken and shattered; and she, as bright as the shining sun, came out of her water singing a song of praise… (77)
‘Come’, said the dove in a ringing voice, ‘and ascend to the joy and the bliss of heaven. (77)
At the time this happened five thousand men were converted to our Lord, and this not counting women and children; and all of them were, as the governor commanded, beheaded at once in Christ’s royal name, in a city of Armenia called Caplimet, … (77)
The governor reddened with the fury that he felt, and became so madly angry that, quite in a frenzy, he condemned her to death; and in the heat of passion ordered that her head should be severed from her body… (77)
Whoever builds a chapel or church in my name, or provides for it any light or lamp, give him and grant him, Lord, the light of heaven. In the house where a woman is lying in labour, as soon as she recalls my name and my passion, Lord, make haste to help her and listen to her prayer; and may no deformed child be born in that house, neither lame nor hunchbacked, neither dumb nor deaf nor afflicted by the Devil. (79)
At this there came what sounded like a clap of thunder; and a dove came down from heaven, as bright as if it burned, with a cross shining with light and radiance, and the maiden fell headlong down to the ground. And the dove came and touched her and raised her up with the cross, and said to her gently with the sweetest of voice, ‘You are blessed, maiden, … (79)
The voice ceased, and she stood up, most joyful of maidens, and began to tell those who were standing around her and lamenting her death that they should be patient. ‘Now leave off your dreadful outcry,’… (81)
After this prayer she bowed her neck and said to the executioner, ‘Now, brother, quickly carry out your orders.’ [81] ‘No,’ he said, ‘I will not, because I have heard how God’s beloved voice has spoken to you.’ / ‘You have no choice’, said the maiden, ‘but to do it; because if you do not, you will not share with me in the kingdom of heaven.’ / And then he lifted up the cruelest of all weapons, and struck sharply down, ... (83)
I, Teochimus, came and took away her beautiful body, and brought it back again to the city of Antioch with great rejoicing, and laid it in a sarcophagus in the house of her grandmother, who was called Clete. Indeed I ought to know all this, for I, during the time of her sufferings in prison, supplied her with provisions… (83)
The house which our Lord is talking about is man himself. Inside, man’s reason is master in this house, and Will can be described as the unruly wife, who, if the household follows her lead, reduces it to chaos, unless Reason as master disciplines her better, and often deprives her of much she would like. (The Custody of the Soul; In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, ‘The Custody of the Soul’ begins here, 87)
And what are these servants? Some are outside and some are inside. The outer servants are man’s five senses—sight and hearing, taste and smell, and sensation in every part of the body. These are subject to Reason, as the head of the household, and wherever he is negligent, there is not one of them who does not often behave in an unruly way and frequently offend, by an impudent manner or by criminal acts. His inner servants plot in all kinds of ways to please the housewife against God’s will, and swear with one voice that things shall go as she wants them to. … Because of these servants, his house will never be properly guarded if he falls asleep or travels anywhere away from home—that is, when man forgets his reason and lets them be. (87)
Reason…Our Lord has lent him the aid of his daughters, who are to be understood as the four cardinal virtues. The first is called Prudence, and the second has the name of Spiritual Fortitude, and the third is Temperance; Justice is the fourth. (89)
Reason the husband, whom God has made the commander of the stronghold, hears all their speeches and thanks God earnestly with a daughters of God, whom he has lent him as a help to guard and defend his castle well, and God’s precious treasure which is locked up inside. The willful housewife remains quite silent, and all the household that she was used to attracting as followers transfer their loyalty to Reason their lord and to these four sisters. (99)
‘Cast out our enemy Fear!’ says Prudence. ‘It is not right that one house should hold these two; for where Joy’s messenger is, and the true Love of eternal Life, Fear is put to flight.’ / ‘Now out, Fear!’ says Fortitude. ‘You are not to stay with us any longer.’ (107)
Now Will the housewife, who was formerly so willful, is entirely subdued, completely directed by the guidance of Reason, who is master of the house; … (107)
St Paul … if I give away all my goods to feed the poor, but do not have charity, it is useless to me. (Guide for Anchoresses, Part 7, 111)
A lady was completely surrounded by her enemies, her land laid waste, and she herself quite destitute, in a castle of clay. But a powerful king had fallen in love with her so inordinately that to win her love he sent his messengers, one after another,… he sent her many splendid presents of jewellery, provisions to support [113] her, help form his noble army to hold her castle. She accepted everything as if it meant nothing to her, … At last he came himself; showed her his handsome face, … offered to make her queen…she was never fit to be his maidservant. … I know for certain that in fighting them I shall receive a mortal wound; and I will accept it gladly in order to win your heart. … I beg you… love me at least when this is done, after my death, although you refused to during my life.’ This king did just as he had promised; he rescued her from all her enemies, … Would not this lady have a base nature if she did not love him after this above all things? / This king is Jesus… showed by feats of arms that he was worthy of love, as was the custom of knights once upon a time. He entered the tournament and, like a bold knight, had his shield pierced through and through in battle for love of his lady. (113-115)
‘But, master,’ you say, ‘what was the point? Could he not have saved us without so much suffering?’ Yes, indeed, very easily; but he did not wish to. Why? To deprive us of any excuse for denying him our love, since he had paid so dearly for it. (117)
…the crucifix—is placed in church where it can be seen most easily, to be a reminder of the knightly prowess of Jesus Christ on the cross. His beloved should see in this how he bought her love: he let his shield be pierced, his side opened up, to show her his heart, to show her openly how deeply he loved her, and to attract her heart. (117)
There is often great love between a man and a woman. But even if she were married to him, she might become so depraved, and might prostitute herself with other men for such a long time that, even she wanted to come back to him, he would have nothing to do with her. Christ, then, loves more than this: … (117)
For as St Augustine says, there is so much difference—that is, between God’s advances to a woman and a man’s—that a man’s advances make a virgin into a woman, and God makes a woman into a virgin. (119)
Now something about the third love. If a child had such an illness that it needed a bath of blood before it could be healed, the mother who was willing to provide this bath for it would love it very much. Our Lord did this for us— (119)
‘If you are so very stubborn, and so out of your senses, that for fear of losing anything you reject such a gain, with every kind of happiness, look! I am holding a cruel sword here above your head to separate body and soul, and plunge them both into the fire of hell, to be the Devil’s [121] whore there in shame and misery for all eternity. Now answer and defend yourself—if you can—against me; or grant me your love which I long for so much, not for my sake, but for your own great advantage.’ / This, you see, is how our Lord woos. (121-123)
Greek fire is made from the blood of a red man, and nothing can [123] extinguish it, so they say, but urine and sand and vinegar. This Greek fire is the love of Jesus our Lord, who was reddened with his own blood on the precious cross—and was, it is thought, naturally red in complexion. … this love which, as Solomon says, cannot be quenched by any waters (which are earthly tribulations) or any temptations, either inner or outer. Now all that remains is to guard yourself carefully against everything which quenches it: that is, urine and sand and vinegar, as I said before. Urine is the stench of sin. Nothing good grows on sand, and it stands for idleness. Idleness cools this fire and puts it out. … vinegar—that is, a heart sour with envy or hatred. (123-125)
The urine, as I said, which extinguishes Greek fire is stinking carnal love, which extinguishes the spiritual love which is signified by Greek fire. (127)
I said earlier, at the beginning, that you should not commit yourselves to keeping any of the outer rules by a vow; I say the same now. And I am not writing them for anyone apart from you. I mention this so that other recluses may not claim that I am presuming to lay down a new Rule for them. I do not ask that they should observe them, and even you may change them for better ones whenever you wish. Compared with the matters dealt with earlier, they are of little importance. (Guide for Anchoresses, Part 8, 131)
People care less about what they have often. For this reason you should take Communion, as our brothers do, only fifteen times a year: … In preparation for all these, make a full confession and receive the discipline—but never from anyone apart from yourselves— … (131)
From Easter until the second feast of the Holy Cross, which falls in the autumn, you should eat twice every day except for the Fridays and Ember Days, Rogation Days and vigils. On these days and in Advent you should not eat dairy produce unless you have to. For the remaining half of the year you should fast all the time, Sundays only excepted, when you are healthy and have all your strength; but the rule does not apply to those who are ill or have been let blood. / You should not eat meat or fat except in the case of serious illness, or when someone is very weak. (131)
...dear sisters, your [131] food and drink have often seemed to me less than I would like. Do not fast on bread and water on any day unless you have permission. / Sometimes a recluse has a meal with her guest outside her quarters. That is showing too much friendliness, for it goes against the nature of any form of religious life, and most of all that of a recluse, who is utterly dead to the world. (131-133)
Do not give lavish entertainments, or encourage strange beggars to come to the gate. … It is not proper for a recluse to be generous with someone else’s donations. … no recluse should accept more than will supply her needs without excess. So what has she to be generous with? (133)
No man should eat in your presence without your director’s permission, … (135)
You, my dear sisters, unless you are forced by necessity and your director advises you to, must not keep any animal except a cat. A refuse who keeps livestock is more like a housewife, … For this reason, if anyone is forced by need to keep livestock, she should see that it does not cause annoyance or damage to anybody else, and that she is not preoccupied with it. (135)
…she may, on her director’s advice, sell tings she has made to supply her needs. (135)
Nobody should wear linen next to the skin unless it is made of stiff and coarse fibres. Anyone who wishes may wear an undergarment of rough wool; anyone who wishes may do without one. You should sleep in a robe, and wearing a belt, but so loosely fastened that you can put your hands under it. Nobody should wear a belt of any kind next to the skin except with her confessor’s permission, or wear anything made of iron or hair or hedgehog skins, or beat herself with them, or with a scourge weighted with lead, with holly, or with thorns, or draw blood, without her confessor’s permission. (137)
Your shoes in winter should be supple, roomy, and warm. In summer you have permission to go around barefoot and wear light shoes. (137)
Sometimes a woman may wear drawers of haircloth tightly fastened, with the legs firmly cross-gartered down to the feet; but a mild and gentle heart is always best. I would rather have you bear a harsh word well than a harsh hair shirt. (137)
Why, then, do you, as a church-recluse, wear a wimple and leave your face open to a man’s gaze? The apostle is talking about those of you who see men, … (139)
I do not forbid you to make narrow lace borders, if one of you is trimming a surplice or an alb; but she should not make other kinds of trimming, especially over-elaborate ones, unless it is absolutely necessary. (139)
A recluse should not degenerate into a schoolmistress, or turn her cell into a children’s school. Her maid may give instruction to some other girl if it would be undesirable to have her taught with men or boys, but a recluse ought not to devote her attention to anyone other than God… (141)
You should have your hair cropped, or shaved if you wish, four times a year to lighten your head (anyone who prefers may have her hair trimmed); … (141)
Wash yourselves wherever necessary as often as you wish, and your things as well. Filth was never dear to God, although poverty and plainness of dress are pleasing to him. (141)
They should not nibble between meals, either fruit or anything else, or drink without permission; and permission should be easily gained for everything that is not sinful. There should be no talking at meals, or very little and in a low voice. (145)
Read some of this book in your free time every day, whether more or less. I hope that if you read it often it will be of much use to you, through God’s great grace; otherwise I would have wasted the long time I spent on it. As God is my witness, I would rather set out to Rome than start writing again. … Whenever you have read anything in this book, greet Our Lady with a Hail Mary for the man who laboured on it. I am moderate enough in asking for so little. / The End. / Remember your scribe sometimes in your prayers, no matter how little. It will benefit you if you pray for others. (end, 149)
posted by Raul de Saldanha at
8:30 AM
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