Confessio Amantis, with Latin addenda

London, s.xv, first quarter

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–214ra) Confessio Amantis Prol. 135–VIII.3114*end

Prol. (fol. 1ra) wants 1–134, 454–594; Book I (fol. 6rb); Book II (fol. 28vb); Book III (fol. 51vb, but English text fol. 52ra); Book IV (fol. 69vb); Book V (fol. 93vb); Book VI (fol. 142vb); Book VII (fol. 158ra); Book VIII (fol. 194ra).

An original first leaf is lost, with text of Prol. 1–134. The first surviving leaf is smudged. A leaf is lost after fol. 2, with text of Prol. 454–594. The closing folios, from fol. 210, are rubbed, damp-stained and badly discoloured.

Text: collated by Macaulay (sigil E): Ic. Macaulay (ed., Works, II.cxlvii–viii) notes some agreements with MSS of the two later recensions, and thinks the exemplar of E ‘must have had some corrections’. ‘On the whole’, he says, ‘the text of E is probably the best of its class’. It is one of the two MSS (the other is Bodleian, MS Bodley 294) that has the narrator refer to himself as ‘Iohn Gowere’ at I.161.

For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.

2

(fol. 214rb) ‘Explicit iste liber’

Explicit iste liber < > sub eo requiesce futurus

3

(fol. 214rb) ‘Quam cinxere freta’

4

(fol. 214rb–va) ‘Quia vnusquisque’

Illustration

Removal of original leaves 1 and 4 probably indicates former presence of prefatory miniature and Nebuchadnezzar picture. There is a twelve-line miniature (75 x 75 mm.) at fol. 7vb (middle), after I.202, illustrating the Lover kneeling before the confessor Genius.

Confessio Amantis, unfinished (no text for most of Book V nor any for Book VIII, about the equivalent of 12,000 lines in all).

London, s.xv, first quarter.

Contents

(ff. 1ra–130vb) Confessio Amantis Prologue 1–VII.3683

Prologue (fol. 1ra–7va); Book I (fol. 7va–27va); Book II (fol. 27va–48ra); Book III (fol. 48ra–64ra); Book IV (fol. 64ra–85ra), half of 85ra and all of 85v being blank, there following a blank and a numbered blank fol. 86 (stub remaining); Book V begins imperfect (fol. 87ra), the lacuna in the text having run from V.1–1442, neither foliated nor counted in the collation, followed by four leaves fols 87ra–90vb with text of V.1443–2149, fols 91–92 blank, fols 93–94 cut out, stubs remaining, and a lacuna in the text from V.2150–7844end; Book VI (fol. 95ra–108va); Book VII (fol. 108vb) breaks off at VII.3683, fol. 130vb, therefore lacking 3684–5438end; Book VIII is absent. A number of single lines were omitted early in the copying, and blanks left. On three occasions long passages were omitted, with loss of text at V.1–1442, V.2150–7844 and VII.3684–5438end, plus all of Book VIII, these lacunae not accounted for by lost leaves and not represented in the collation. There may have been problems in the acquisition of copy or in the organisation of production, or a patron may have died (the planned illustration and decoration was never carried out). For the omission of I.161, with ‘Iohn Gowere’ named, see the description of Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 693, in this Catalogue.

NB the last quire, fols 127ra–130vb, was written by the same hand as the rest of the MS but in a bolder script and with more pen-line decoration on ascenders than elsewhere in the MS. These four leaves are also thicker and stiffer than others in the MS. They were formerly misbound, as was quire xiii.

Text: Ic (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cl), sigil D. Macaulay’s description of the MS is out-of-date, since it has been rebound since his time and the foliation corrected.

Confessio Amantis, with ‘Explicit iste liber’, ‘Quam cinxere freta’, ‘Quia unusquisque’

Possible provincial origin, s.xv, first quarter

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–214rb) Confessio Amantis

Prologue (fol. 1ra); Book I (fol. 8rb); Book II (fol. 29va); Book III (fol. 52va); Book IV (fol. 70va); Book V (fol. 94va), lacks two leaves, with text of V.57–213 and 1615–1770; Book VI (fol. 143ra); Book VII begins at fol. 159ra, though Book VI ends at the bottom of 158vb with ‘Explicit liber sextus’ and catchword ‘Incipit liber septimus’, which is repeated at the top of 159ra; Book VIII (fol. 194ra).

Lines 631–814 are missing from Book I, without loss of leaf, showing that the MS from which it was copied, which here must have lost a leaf, had exactly forty-six lines per column, as in many fine early MSS.

Collated by Macaulay, sigil J, Type Ia, but text very close to MS Fairfax 3 (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxxxix–cxl).

For further information about the following Latin and French addenda that Gower caused to be added to MSS of the Confessio, see Appendix III.

2

(fol. 214rb) ‘Explicit iste liber’

3

(fol. 214rb) ‘Quam cinxere freta’

4

(fol. 214rb–214va) ‘Quia unusquisque’

Illustration

The space of three lines following Prol. 578 at the bottom of fol. 4vb may have been intended for a miniature, suggests Griffiths (‘The Poem and its Pictures’, 176 n. 8; 177), since a space of the same size is found at the same point in BL, MS Egerton 913 (and also a normal-sized miniature, completed, in Cambridge UL, MS Mm.2.21). But, coincidence apart, it is an exceptionally small space for a miniature.

Our cure-seekers shared one common goal: the desire to secure the saints’ intercession to bring about miraculous healing. The afflictions that these cure-seekers were relieved of are therefore central to the narratives recorded within the miracula, and to this current study. The accounts of holy healing that were documented in the miracle accounts must, of course, be recognised as only a literary representation of healing experiences. Nevertheless, they have the potential to indicate wider patterns of miraculous cure-seeking, providing an insight into the range and variety of complaints that were brought to the saints’ shrines.

The previous chapter established that monks, hagiographers included, would have had some understanding of health and healing but little reason to consult the medical literature available within their monasteries, unless their obedientiary responsibilities required it. That the period under discussion here also sat on the cusp of the wide dissemination of the translated classical medical corpus into the monasteries, and that cure-seekers had other avenues of healthcare available to them, makes the study of the twelfth-century accounts of miraculous healing all the more valuable. As well as providing an insight into how ill health and impairment were experienced, the language of the miracles can also be analysed to consider evidence of medical knowledge on the part of their compilers. Here it is worth exploring whether the hagiographers, and the cure-seekers who experienced these afflictions, demonstrate any medical awareness.

The reports of miraculous healing, and their representation of the afflictions brought by cure-seekers to these seven shrines, are central to this chapter, and here the use of statistical analysis is advantageous. Analysis of health concerns recorded in miracle accounts has been a feature of hagiographical studies since Finucane’s foundational Miracles and Pilgrims and continues to prove a useful method for revealing the range and patterns of curative miracles. As noted in the introduction, a key difference here from many previous studies is the intentional focus on a select, small group of miracula and the cure-seekers represented within these works. This focus allows this chapter to tease out the details from these accounts and to provide comprehensive discussion of some of the more notable cases that are included in the miracula. This results in a more ‘up close and personal’ approach than can be achieved with the great overview studies.

Every textual family identified in this project has something to tell scholars that we could not learn from the Procter-Wordsworth edition (PW), which was based almost entirely on a single printed edition (the 1531 folio breviary). Even the other early editions are less predictable than the PW editors suggested. The lessons for saints in the portable ones are abridged from sources that often differ significantly from the long lessons in the folio editions. Nor should we assume that either the long printed lessons or the abridged ones represent some official Sarum consensus, much less the best texts in their respective traditions. The manuscripts are full of illuminating surprises – lessons that shed new light on the earlier history of the versions eventually chosen for printing, lessons that clearly stem from other sources entirely, selectively abridged versions that offer implicit critiques of the saints’ legends they are retelling, and so on. Providing an overview of the various textual families, this section of the book will emphasize the disparities among them, give examples of their departures from the printed editions, and suggest some of the possibilities they present for future research.

The early folio editions and their closest manuscript relatives

As explained above in Part One (the Catalogue), the three early folio editions of the Sarum breviary that are complete enough to inventory (the 1518 lectionary and the 1516 and 1531 folio breviaries) give texts for the ten sets of lessons in my sample that are almost but not quite identical, having enough minor variants to suggest the possibility that they were based on slightly different manuscript exemplars. Despite their textual similarities, however, the 1518 Sarum lectionary has important differences in content from the two folio breviaries. Although this lectionary has incorporated most of the fifteenth-century additions to the Sarum calendar, the only new feasts for which its Sanctorale supplies proper lessons are the three recently mandated ones pertaining to the life of Christ – the Visitation and its octave, the Transfiguration, and Holy Name – plus Mary of the Snows, a relatively obscure celebration in honor of the Virgin. For the new Sarum feasts of David, Chad, feast day and Translation of John of Beverley, Translation of Etheldreda, and Frideswide, the 1518 Sarum lectionary has only rubrics, indicating in each case that all the lessons are to come from the Common

Based on a life story interview with Keeya (16 September 2019)

My name is Keeya. I came to Kenya due to the situation I was facing back home. I am from Uganda but the situation wasn’t good. However much I want to be still in Uganda, because that’s where I was born, the situation didn’t favour me to stay. Instead, it pushed me to leave the country I love so much. I came to Nairobi in 2015. I have seen a lot, which made me leave Uganda – a lot! I was ministering in church, I was a singer, a preacher, and a pastor; I preached the gospel and encouraged people to come to the Lord, and I strengthened them in different ways so that they could stand and believe in God. Because being gay doesn’t make you leave God. It means you were created that way.

I personally understood later that maybe I was created that way. I now believe that’s how I was created, but at the time it was hard. Because we used to be in church where they would speak out against homosexuality – and you are gay and you hear them abusing you, talking bad against homosexuality; if that’s what you are, you don’t feel good and you have to encourage yourself. But the fact is that it wasn’t me who created myself, and no one taught it to me; rather it just came. I started realising that I have feelings for my fellow man, and it used to stress me so much.

I used to pray a lot. I was raised Muslim, and Muslims used to say that homosexuality is bad, so it made me think that I’m a sinner. Muslims also used to say that the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were burnt because of homosexuality, but they also failed to explain clearly that there were a lot of sins going on there. The sheikhs would just say it happened because of homosexuality. But if God destroyed them due to homosexuality, then God would also have killed me – but I’m still alive; I don’t have any curse. Later I got saved, I became a born-again Christian.

In around 1330, about fifty years after Iacob and Iosep’s manuscript, Bodley 652, the Auchinleck manuscript was created. Perhaps the most significant manuscript witness to Middle English literature, it is often thought of as an anthology of romances. Whereas Iacob and Iosep is the only English item in its manuscript, the Auchinleck Life of Adam and Eve is surrounded by English literature; and whereas Bodley 652 is deeply obscure, the Auchinleck manuscript has been celebrated, reproduced in facsimile, digitised and generally subjected to all forms of scholarly attention. The Auchinleck Life is one of two verse lives of Adam and Eve that I will be discussing in this chapter. They retell another episode from Genesis, but one that was (and still is) more culturally central in England and the Christian world. However, the primary source for both poems is not Genesis, but an apocryphal text that narrates the adventures of Adam and Eve after they were expelled from Paradise. Whereas the poet of Iacob and Iosep gave no indication of where he was getting his material, seeming cheerfully indifferent to the ways in which his story departed from the biblical text, the authors of these two poems make several – sometimes confusing – references to their sources. The two Lives share some features with Iacob and Iosep: they are short, clear narratives with an ear for dialogue and a taste for drama and the exotic. But they are more morally oriented than the earlier poem, presenting their protagonists as exemplary figures, and using their stories to deliver nuggets of theological and pastoral instruction.

The Auchinleck Life of Adam and Eve and the Canticum de Creatione appear uniquely in their respective manuscripts, and were edited together in 2002. The Auchinleck Life appears in the first booklet of the manuscript, which is dominated by religious texts: it comes after The King of Tars and before the stanzaic lives of St Margaret and St Katherine. It is now the third item in Auchinleck, but was originally numbered eighth. The poem as we have it is incomplete: the title and the opening section of the poem are lost; then there are 352 lines in the fragment of Auchinleck that is now Edinburgh University MS 218, after which there is a further missing section; the poem begins again on folio 14 of Auchinleck and continues for a further 427 lines.

Iacob and Iosep is one of the earliest surviving Middle English poems, probably dating from the second half of the thirteenth century and thus roughly contemporary with early romances such as King Horn, Kyng Alisaunder and Floris and Blauncheflur. The poem has not been completely ignored since Napier’s 1916 edition: David C. Fowler enthused about the originality of its narrative construction and its overall effect; in 1945 Oscar Sherwin used it to argue for the existence of a lost ‘tradition of religious ballads composed and sung by the friars’; and it has had some attention in studies of thirteenth-century manuscripts. Most recently, in 2017, Murdoch published an article dedicated to the poem and its relationship with earlier receptions of the Bible. But it has fallen outside the scope of two of the most influential assessments of the vernacular literature of thirteenth-century England: Susan Crane’s Insular Romance and Christopher Cannon’s The Grounds of English Literature. In this chapter I will analyse the poem’s unusual mixture of English colouring and interest in a foreign landscape and linguistic context, the tight fall and rise plot it combines with a free rewriting of the Genesis story, and the high emotion it maintains alongside its articulation of male upper class interests. I will attempt to reconstruct the poem’s original vernacular literary context, including biblical poetry, ballads, saints’ lives and romances, and show how its deceptively simple style belies its participation in a lively literary culture. I will argue that the poem was written for a knightly audience, probably by a household chaplain, rejecting both Murdoch’s view that it was written for a baron, and characterisations of its manuscript as a friars’ miscellany.

Iacob and Iosep runs to only 538 lines in its current state – halfway through the poem a leaf of its unique manuscript, MS Bodley 652, is missing. Its lines are arranged in rhyming couplets, a mixture of alexandrines, septenaries and four-stress lines, giving an overall effect that Derek Pearsall has described as ‘vigorous and fast paced’. This rather irregular form connects the poem with contemporaries such as the South English Legendary and the ballad of Judas, which I will discuss in more detail below, as well as the later romance of Gamelyn.

Confessio Amantis (extensively defective) with Latin addenda; also four short poems by Chaucer.

London. The date 1432 (noted by Macaulay, II.cxlvi; now illegible) was added, with a new shield painted over old arms erased (s.xvi), fol. 1r (the decoration is later than that date, s.xv, third quarter).

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–137va) Confessio Amantis Prol. 176–VIII.3114*end

Prol. (begins fol. 1ra) wants 1–175 (except for fragments of 85* and 125), 455–78, 505–27, 716–26, 979–1061; Book I (fol. 6vb) wants 199–3446end; Book II (fol. 8ra) wants 1–56; Book III (fol. 25vb, incipit and first three lines of Latin verse-heading; English text begins at fol. 26ra) wants 1150–2774end; Book IV (fol. 32ra) wants 1–1516, 1643–68; Book V (fol. 43rb) wants 7807–44end; Book VI (fol. 82ra) wants 1–154; Book VII (fol. 93rb); Book VIII (fol. 121va).

Fols 1–7 once contained Prol. 1–I.198 complete, but are now much mutilated and defaced. Of fol. 1r, only the bottom border remains, with fragments of script in red ink at the bottom of col. a and of Prol. 85* (‘[….] that luste apiere’) at the bottom of col. b; fol. 1v has Prol. 125 (‘Nought vpon oon but vpon alle’) at the bottom of col. a and Prol. 176 at the bottom of col. b; fol. 3 has lost Prol. 455–78 (recto) and 505–27 (verso); fol. 4 has had a miniature cut out, with loss of Prol. 716–26 on verso; fol. 6, of which only a thick stub remains, has Prol. 932–78 (fol. 6ra) and (acephalous) Prol. 1062–end, Latin verse-heading to Book I, I.1–10, and five lines of Latin gloss (fol. 6vb). Seventeen leaves are lost after fol. 7, with text of I.199–II.56; sixteen leaves and the top inner quarter of a seventeenth (fol. 32ra/32vb) are lost after fol. 31 (III.1150–IV.1516, 1643–68); one leaf is lost after fol. 81 (V.7807–VI.154). V.1548–1748 and 1749–1952 are transposed, fols 51–52. In all, thirty-four leaves are lost, and others badly damaged.

Confessio Amantis, perhaps the earliest surviving MS, seventeen leaves lost. London, s.xiv, very late.

Contents

1

(fols 1ra–169va) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3172

(NB Missing leaves are not counted in the foliation) Prologue (fol. 1ra) wants one leaf after fol. 1, with loss of text of Prol. 147–320, and one leaf after fol. 5 (pace Macaulay, who refers to fol. 7, [ed.], Works, II.clii), with Prol. 1055–84end, loss continuing to I.106; Book I (fol. 6ra) wants 1–106 where Book I would have begun on missing leaf between 5 and 6; Book II (fol. 24rb); Book III (fol. 43vb) wants three leaves after fol. 46, with III.573–1112; in addition fol. 50, with text of III.1665–1848, has been tipped in to replace an original folio 50 removed; Book IV (fol. 56ra) wants one leaf after fol. 68, with IV.2351–2530 (the recently discovered Takamiya fragment: see ‘Fragments’, Appendix I), two leaves after fol. 69, with IV.2711–3078, one leaf after fol. 70, with IV.3263–3442, and two leaves after fol. 71, with IV.3626–3712end, loss continuing to V.274; Book V (fol. 74) wants 1–274, and one leaf is lost after fol. 107, with V.6821–7000; Book VI (fol. 113ra) wants one leaf after fol. 125, with loss of VI.2357–2440, loss continuing to VII.88; Book VII (fol. 127) wants 1–88, two leaves after fol. 139, with VII.2641–3004, and two leaves after fol. 153, with VII.5417–38end, loss continuing to VIII.336; Book VIII (fol. 156) wants 1–336.

The removal and substitution of fol. 50 is so far unexplained, though the ingenious suggestion has been made to us by Sebastian Sobecki (personal communication) that the leaf was removed because of the striking resemblance of the story it tells of Athemas and Demephon (III.1757–1856) to the reality of Henry of Lancaster’s imminent return from exile. However, if the resemblance was thought to be unfortunate, it is hard to know why the leaf was replaced with so little changed (the substitution of ‘maneres’ for ‘manaces’ in III.1832 is cited).

Gower, Confessio Amantis, written by five principal scribes with a sixth adding missed text to the work of the third.

London, s.xv, first quarter.

Contents

(fols 1ra–183vb) Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1–VIII.3114*

Prologue (fol. 1ra); Book I (fol. 7rb); Book II (fol. 26rb); Book III (fol. 46ra); Book IV (fol. 61rb); Book V (fol. 81va); Book VI (fol. 124rb); Book VII (fol. 137va); Book VIII (fol. 167ra). Book VIII ends at the bottom of fol. 183vb; in the margin a modern pencil note reads ‘clxxxiv gone’ (the MS foliation is in Roman throughout). The usual Latin ending rubrics and poems may have been on this lost leaf.

Text: Ia (Macaulay [ed.], Works, II.cxl–cxli; sigil M). Macaulay notes the close relationship between this MS and Bodleian, MS Bodley 902.

Illustration

This manuscript includes both of the usual miniatures, that for Nebuchadnezzar’s dream on folio 4rb, after Prol.578, and that of Amans kneeling before a seated figure of the Confessor on folio 8rb, before I.203. The first, in the text column for folio 4rb, after twelve lines of text and extending over thirteen lines, is enclosed in a thick bright blue frame with white highlights. The king lies in a bed with pink hangings behind his bedhead (on left of image), crowned and with forked beard, his shoulders appearing draped in white bedclothes above the sheet, turned down over blue bed covering. The Man of Metal stands at the right, beneath the foot of the bed, with arms outstretched and left forearm and hand breaching the frame. His feet and shins, and all of his upper torso and arms, are silver-grey while his thighs and abdomen are gold. A backdrop of red with gold foliage patterns fills the upper part of the framed image. The second miniature is squeezed into the right margin of folio 8rb, again in a bright blue frame with white highlights, and taking up the equivalent of twelve lines of text.

Based on a life story interview with Cindy (21 September 2019)

My name is Cindy. I left Uganda in October 2016. I have been living in different parts of Kenya ever since I came. I have been homeless, sometimes facing eviction from houses by landlords, because of my sexuality. Right now, I’m in the process of resettlement, and I’m at the embassy stage, which is quite a privilege. I am currently a director at Pride Umbrella Kenya, which is a community-based organisation (CBO) of refugees. We are based in Rongai and I’m so happy that I am helping the community to move on, that I’m part of community work.

I define myself as a transgender but transvestite. In public, I prefer to look like a man but when I’m in a safe space like home with the community, I just love to cross-dress. Even right now, if I had cross-dressed, with my wig on, my best makeup on, I feel I would give out my best, I would feel comfortable. Yeah, I feel very comfortable when I cross-dress. Much more than when I am like this [gestures towards the casual clothes she is wearing]; I feel like I am not that person I really want to be. It’s funny. But because of the public and the way people look at you in situations, you just have to be like a man, like the society expects.

When I cross-dress I feel really myself! For instance, we were at a proactive grant workshop. There was this grant that was coming, and we were called as CBO leaders to come and discuss how we are going to use this grant. So I was called and I decided that when I go like this I will not feel comfortable, so I packed my wigs and all that in my bag and I went. I was actually really confident and I gave my best. That’s the day I felt that when I’m cross-dressing I’m really myself, I really feel confident, and people are looking at me and they really take on what I am saying.

I came to Kenya in 2016. When I got here, I barely had anything; I was just seeking refuge with friends.