The Review of English Studies/Volume 1/Recent Research upon the Ancren Riwle

RECENT RESEARCH UPON THE ANCREN RIWLE

By R. W. Chambers

It is now more than seventy years since the first (and so far the only) edition of the Ancren Riwle was made by James Morton. Morton was no philological specialist, and he owns to having been sometimes puzzled (as most later students have been) by obscurities of language. Yet his edition is a solid piece of work. For sixty years, scholarship had little to add to Morton’s statements concerning the origin and authorship of the Rule, and his view that the book was written by Richard Poore (who was Bishop successively of Chichester, Salisbury and Durham, and who died in 1237) is repeated, with more or less hesitation, in the standard works of reference.^[1]

But ten years ago a new stage in the study of the book was inaugurated by G. C. Macaulay, with his patient collation of the manuscripts; and the present-day student is overwhelmed by a mass of conflicting arguments. Three new claimants to the honour of the authorship have been brought forward, while it has been maintained that the book was not written first in English, but was translated from the Anglo-Norman.

The question of language is one of importance. For the Rule is the greatest book of its class in either Anglo-Norman or English. A good deal of it is the ordinary mediæval pious instruction; but from time to time we find the writer showing powers of an astonishing kind. For example, this account of the backbiter is like nothing that we know, up to this date, in either English or Norman prose: it might come from a character-sketch many centuries later:

He casts down his head, and begins to sigh before he says a word; then he talks around the subject for a long time with a sorrowful countenance, to be the better believed. But when it all comes out, it is yellow poison: “Alas, wellaway, woe is me, that he (or she) has fallen into such repute. Enough did I try, but I could do no good herein. It is long ago that I knew of it; but nevertheless it should never have been betrayed by me; but now that it is so widely known through others, I cannot gainsay it. They say that it is bad; and yet it is worse than they say. Grieved and sorry I am that I must say it; but in truth it is so, and that is a great grief. For many other things he (or she) is greatly to be praised; but not for these, and woe is me therefore. No one can defend them.”^[2]

A book of devotion, written by a pronounced ascetic, for three ladies, anchoresses, whose way of life was, as the writer says, one perpetual martyrdom, might have proved painful reading. Instead, it is so kindly and gentle, so full of sound common-sense, that although the reading of it is no easy task, the reader looks back on it as one of the most pleasant of mediæval books, and one of the principal ornaments of the literature to which it belongs.

 

Thirteen manuscripts of the Rule are extant, complete or fragmentary: eight in English, four in Latin, and one in French.^[3] There is no doubt whatever that the book was written in England—the fact that the writer thanks God “that heresy prevails not in England” is one sign out of many. In what language it was written has been the subject of dispute from the outset. The work was known to Wanley in the eighteenth century, and he, not unnaturally, took it for granted that the Latin was the original and the English a translation.^[4] Morton, when he edited the English version in 1853, argued from the blunders of the Latin text that it could be nothing but a translation, and often a mistranslation, of the English. For forty years this view held the field, till Bramlette^[5] tried to reassert the priority of the Latin. Here and there Bramlette scores a point against Morton: so that this is one of the numerous controversies where the reader who does not go back to see exactly how much of the original case remains unshaken, may well think that such case has been overthrown. In point of fact, the number of Morton’s arguments which remain quite untouched is amply sufficient to prove his case that the Latin is a translation; and were this not so, there remain any number of further arguments in reserve. This was conclusively shown by G. C. Macaulay.^[6]

 

G. C. Macaulay was the first scholar to make use of the French version of the Rule. Morton had been unable to consider its claims, for the French manuscript was so damaged in the great Cottonian fire as to be in his day quite unusable. It has been repaired, and most of it can now be read. Macaulay’s study led him to the conclusion that, though the Latin was translated from the English, the English in its turn was translated from the French.

Yet there is one fact which was well known both to Bramlette and to Macaulay, and which makes extremely difficult any theory which denies that the English version is the original one. That G. C. Macaulay should have passed so lightly over the fatal flaw in his argument emphasises the saying of the Ancren Riwle, that “often does a full cunning smith forge a full weak knife.”

In the English Ancren Riwle occur six long lines of rhyming verse.^[7] Now in the corresponding place in the French, and in the Latin, is found a literal translation of these lines into prose. Macaulay proposed to account for these facts by supposing that these lines of verse were not by the author of the Ancren Riwle, but were current at the time. “The French writer, who was no doubt an Englishman, turned them into French prose when he adopted them for his purpose … the English translator, being familiar with the original, quoted them as verse.”

Now a precedent for such treatment of a translated passage can be found. When Bede gave his account of the poet Cædmon in his Historia Ecclesiastica, he gave the text of Cædmon’s first song in a Latin prose translation. When, under Alfred, Bede’s Latin was translated into English, Bede’s paraphrase was not retranslated, but the English text of Cædmon’s song was substituted for it. But such action by a medieval translator in dealing with the quotations in his original shows extraordinary information and mental alertness. It would be remarkable if a twelfth-century writer, using French, had woven into his discourse a literal translation of a piece of English verse, and if his English translator had been able from memory to reinsert the English original.

But what Mr. Macaulay supposes to have happened is something much more complicated than this, for which I do not think any precedent can be found. For these verses are not given, either in the French or the English, as the current quotation which Mr. Macaulay assumes them to be. What is given as a current quotation is a Latin distich enumerating the subjects of holy meditation:

Mors tua, mors Domini, nota culpæ, gaudia celi,
Iudicii terror, figantur mente fideli.

Then follow in the English the words “That is,” and then the six lines of English verse: this six-line English poem is a paraphrase of the Latin distich, expanding it metri gratia and putting the subjects of meditation in a different order, to facilitate the rhyme. The French gives the Latin distich: then follow the words “c’est,” and then follows a translation, not of the Latin verses, but of the English ones.

Mr. Macaulay’s explanation compels us to assume (1) that the six English lines were not the work of the writer of the Ancren Riwle, but were already current and generally known—an assumption for which there is no support. We must then further assume (2) that the author of the original French Ancren Riwle not only knew these English lines, but was so bemused by them that, having quoted a Latin distich and wishing to translate it into French, he translated these six English lines instead, and offered them to his readers as being what they are not, viz. a French prose translation of the Latin; (3) that then the English translator, adroitly seeing what had happened, substituted the English verse in place of the French prose translation, and thus gave us for the first time an intelligible sequence: the Latin distich followed by a free paraphrase into English verse.

I think it must be agreed that this involves quite illegitimate assumptions. We must assert with confidence that at this point it is the French text which is translated from the English, and not the reverse, unless, like the undergraduate in Punch, we are prepared to scorn Virgil as being nothing but a literal translation of the crib.

Unfortunately this does not quite settle the question of the priority of the two versions of the Rule. The mediæval scribes had a baffling habit of interpolating and correcting manuscripts from various sources. Now we know that the French copy from which the extant French manuscript was transcribed must have had at least one very serious gap: the scribe copied continuously without noticing the hiatus. It might conceivably be argued that this French copy may have had other gaps, which the scribe noticed, and filled in (having no second French copy at hand) by borrowing an English copy and translating these missing pieces; and that therefore the demonstrable fact that in one place the only extant French manuscript is translated from the English must not without further examination be held to prove that the whole of the French version is a translation. Comparison of manuscripts, and the transcribing of manuscripts from two sources, one of which was used to supplement deficiencies in the other, were processes constantly going on in the Middle Ages. Thus a monk of St. Martin’s, Tournai, tells us that the library had such a reputation that its books were constantly sought by all for the purpose of correcting their copies;^[8] and Guigo, prior of the Grande Chartreuse, finding his copy of Hilary on the Psalms corrupt, writes to Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, asking for the loan of the Cluny copy; Peter does not send it because he finds that the Cluny copy has the same corruption of which Guigo had complained. On the other hand, Peter asks for the loan of Augustine’s letters; the Cluny copy had been lent to one of the outlying hermitages, and a large portion of the opening correspondence between Augustine and Jerome had been unfortunately devoured by a bear.^[9]

Similarly, it might be argued, by those who believe that the French is the original, that, in this French original, the Latin distich was quoted without any translation; that then, when the English translator came to render the French Rule, he felt the necessity of some explanation of these two Latin lines, and so inserted the English six-line paraphrase; that then some ultra-conscientious and very stupid French scribe, who was transcribing the French version, compared the English version to see if he could improve and correct his French text, and that it was in this way that a translation of these English lines came to be inserted into the French Rule.

Considering the ways of scribes, these things are conceivable; and for this reason, however clear the evidence may be of certain manuscript relationships, we should never allow it to blind us to the possibility of other relationships in an exactly opposite direction. Still, the fact remains that in the one place where, owing to the occurrence of verse, a conclusive test is possible, the test demands an English original. Only very strong evidence in a contrary direction can shake this, or justify us in making highly hypothetical conjectures to account for the plain fact.

The reason why Mr. Macaulay rejected the obvious inference from the English verses was that he had found fifteen instances where the English appeared to him to be a translation from the French. The general respect for Mr. Macaulay’s great knowledge seems to have caused his argument to be accepted by most students without further scrutiny.

About four years ago, however, a detailed examination of these passages was made by Miss D. M. E. Dymes, and her results have recently been published.^[10] They are of the utmost importance. Miss Dymes shows how double-edged Mr. Macaulay’s arguments are. In most of the fifteen cases there has clearly been a misunderstanding. But whether the English writer mistook the meaning of the French or the French of the English admits of dispute; both versions make sense. Miss Dymes gives an elaborate analysis of each case: in six passages there is nothing to decide either way; in one case there is, perhaps, a slight superiority in the French wording; in the eight other cases Miss Dymes finds reason to think the English reading the original. She shows that, on abstract grounds, the English makes rather better sense than the French, sometimes very much better sense; and she brings in, with devastating effect, a consideration which Mr. Macaulay had overlooked—the question as to which reading could more easily have grown out of the other. How much weight can be attached to these fifteen instances of real or apparent mistranslation remains open to question; but that the weight, such as it is, favours an English and not a French original is, after Miss Dymes’ excellent demonstration, no longer disputable.

There are other weighty criteria favouring the English, of which Mr. Macaulay knew, but to which he attached strangely little value. For instance there is a rhymed proverb,^[11] and there are two plays upon words,^[12] in the English version. The French agrees with the English closely,^[13] without rhyme or play upon words. Surely it would be very extraordinary if an English translator, following his original so closely, had managed to work in these decorations.

One further argument there is, which has not, I think, as yet been used. The Ancren Riwle belongs to a group of writings to which the English St. Margaret also belongs. If the original Rule was addressed to the sisters in the English language, it is probable that, amongst the books which they are admonished to read, some at least would be in English; and we find accordingly in the English version “Have ye not this also concerning Ruffin the devil, in your English book of St. Margaret?”^[14] The writer of the Ancren Riwle knew all about the anchoresses and what books they had; he was, in fact, their “master.” But there is no reason to suppose that the translator, who adapted the Rule for some other community which used a language different from that of the original anchoresses, knew these private details or took interest in them; we should therefore expect such translation rather to tone down the personal details of the original. And the French speaks simply of “your book of St. Margaret.”^[15] We can be fairly certain that personal details are original. Many alterations the scribes would be prone to make, but it would be an anachronism to suspect them of adding, like Pooh-Bah, “corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative.” Of course, though the translator would not be likely to add to the details about the original anchoresses, details appropriate to those for whom he was translating the work might well come to be recorded. We shall see that a case of this occurs in the association of the Latin version (and that version alone) with Tarente. But where, as here, some detail is vouched for as original by its occurrence in both versions (“your book of St. Margaret”), then the version which gives this in its fullest detail (“your English book of St. Margaret”) is likely to be the original one.

Finally, it should be said that Dr. Joseph Hall, in his Selections from Early Middle English, has edited two passages from the Rule, giving indeed a model edition of the closing pages. He has compared the two versions throughout these passages, and finds no trace of English mistranslations from the French, but several of French mistranslations from the English. His general comparison of the two is noteworthy: “The English has all the vigour and raciness of an original work, while the French gives the impression of being unidiomatic and wanting in spontaneity.”

 

The question arises: How did a scholar like Mr. Macaulay come to attach such importance to a number of double-edged arguments as to make him overlook the clearest evidence to the contrary? The answer is found in his own words: “the a priori probabilities are of course in favour of the supposition that the English was translated from the French.” Now this may be true enough in dealing with the fourteenth century—the period with which Mr. Macaulay was most conversant, and where he had such extraordinary knowledge alike of Anglo-French, Anglo-Latin, and English, as his edition of Gower in those three languages testifies. But at the date when the Ancren Riwle was written, the matter is different. Of course it is difficult to fix that date exactly; but few scholars are found who would date it much before 1140 or much after 1220. Now, during this period the a priori probabilities are surely in favour of English.

An English prose had been deliberately created by King Alfred, three centuries before the rise of French prose. This tradition was continued by a group of scholars of whom Ælfric is the best known: Ælfric, “the great master of prose in all its forms.” “Ælfric,” says Professor Ker, “works on principles that would have been approved by Dryden.”^[16] English even became an official language alongside of Latin at the King’s Chancellery, in a way which cannot be paralleled on the Continent. The Conqueror had to recognize this; we have records of at least twenty-six documents issued by him in English;^[17] but of course not a single one in French. After the Conquest English historical prose continued its life, albeit feebly, in some of the monasteries, and did not finally expire at Peterborough till a date later than that to which some students would attribute the composition of the Ancren Riwle. The use of English prose for religious purposes persisted, whilst early Anglo-Norman showed a marked preference for verse.

If then the Ancren Riwle was first written in Anglo-Norman, it was unprecedented, in that it was certainly the most considerable prose work in its own particular kind which, so far as we know, had been written in that language at that date; if it was first written in English it was the culmination of a great and still living tradition. It might conceivably be either; but I should have thought that the a priori probabilities were on the side of the English.

But there is a further consideration. In the two centuries following the composition of the Ancren Riwle, there is of course no doubt that the circumstances changed in favour of French prose. It was one of the most glorious periods of French prose—the age of Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, and the prose Lancelot. During this period the a priori probability is that any work, such as “Mandeville,” extant both in French and English prose, was originally written in French. It is not only that official prose was always either Latin or, like Britton’s Epitome of English Law, French. Englishmen habitually wrote their letters in French. If a body of tradesmen or craftsmen met together to draw up the rules of their guild, such rules would be in French rather than English. An official proclamation addressed even to humble people is always in French, if it is not in Latin; it seems to be assumed that, if a man can read or write at all, he can of course read French. Of the documents illustrating citizen life in London during the reigns of Edward I., II., III., which Mr. Riley collected, more than two-thirds are in Latin, the remainder either in French or in French together with Latin; not one is in English.^[18] It is not till the reign of Richard II. that English begins, very tentatively, to make its reappearance in civic affairs. Before this, Wyclif had been using English, but with a clumsiness which contrasts with the ease of English verse, whether in the hands of Chaucer and Gower or of the alliterative poets, or even of inferior craftsmen like Minot. Not till the fifteenth century do we find an English prose which can rival that of the Ancren Riwle.

Now it was just during these two centuries of French ascendancy that the manuscripts of the Ancren Riwle were being multiplied. There is one French manuscript, whilst there are eight English.^[19] Further, the Latin is translated from the English, not from the French. Now assuming the English to be the original, this is intelligible; for if the French translation came to be made decades after the English, it is easy to understand that the English might well have had such a start that the French, in spite of the popularity of that tongue, could not catch it up. But if the work is really a French work, it is difficult to see why, during this period when French prose was so fashionable and English prose so depressed, the English manuscripts should be so much more numerous than the French. Of course, it may be said that the French were more numerous, but that a mere accident has led to the preservation of the English and the destruction of the French. This may be so. A priori appearances may be misleading; but, for what they are worth, the a priori appearances are all in favour of the English being the original.

 

There remains, then, no argument whatever in favour of French as the original language of the Rule, whilst the converging arguments in favour of English are many of them so strong that only conclusive documentary evidence to the contrary could shake them. The question of the authorship does not allow of so satisfactory a solution. The Latin version says that Simon of Ghent wrote it for his sisters at Tarente. Simon was Bishop of Salisbury, and died in 1315; language and palæography make it impossible that he can have been the author of the English version, though we may accept the statement as evidence that he is the author of the Latin recension. This was recognised by Morton when he edited the English text; but Morton was led by the mention of Tarente (presumably Tarrent Kaines in Dorsetshire) to attribute the English Rule to an earlier Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Poore, bishop from 1217 to 1229. Poore is said to have been born at Tarrent, he refounded the nunnery there, returned from Durham, whither he had been translated, came to Tarrent in his last sickness in 1237, and was buried there. But the mention of Tarrent is found only in the Latin version, and there only as the name of the nunnery where the sisters of Simon of Ghent were. We have no reason to suppose that the original author had any connection with Tarrent: and his connection with Tarrent is the sole claim which Poore possesses to the authorship of the Ancren Riwle.

 

In 1916 Father Vincent McNabb, O. P., put forward the claim that the author was a Dominican Friar, and probably Friar Robert Bacon.^[20] In the first part of this theory, he was following J. B. Dalgairns, who, as Father McNabb points out, had written, in 1870, “the only thing that is certain is that it [the Rule] was written by a Dominican; for the list of prayers which the writer enumerates as having been in use among the lay brethren of his Order are nearly identical with those ordered in the Rule of St. Dominic.”^[21] The passage upon which this theory rests runs:

Our lay bretheren say thus their hours: for Uhtsong (Matins) on work days (ferial days) eight and twenty Pater Nosters; on holy-days (feast-days) forty; for Evensong, fifteen; etc. … If any of you will do this, she followeth here, as in other observances, much of our order.^[22]

Now, as Miss Allen points out, this passage is found only in one manuscript. That, in itself, is no fatal objection to its authenticity. For the Rule was written originally for the three recluses, and then was copied as a general book of devotion applicable to much wider circles; so it was quite natural that certain passages should come to be missed out in most copies. The serious objection is that this passage seems quite inconsistent with the Rule, as written for these three original recluses. These recluses were obviously able to read Latin, French, and English. The writer goes so far as to say; “Often, dear sisters, ye ought to pray less that ye may read more. Reading is good prayer.”^[23] This, Mr. Macaulay remarks,^[24] is “contrary to the usual teaching, but quite in harmony with the sound common sense of the Ancren Riwle.” And, in accordance with this, the sisters have just been given elaborate instructions how to say their hours, instructions which show that they are educated women, who can use service books: “Let every one say her hours as she has them written.”^[25] Then suddenly we have this alternative method of saying the hours “as our lay brethren do,” obviously intended for illiterate devotees. The fact that this alternative method is found in one manuscript only, makes us quite certain that it must be the addition of some scribe (possibly enough a Dominican). But the essential reason for rejecting it is not that it is found in one MS. only, but that it is inconsistent with the rest of the Rule. As Miss Allen says, “the omission of the passage from all other copies is the least suspicious detail in its connection.”

Another passage in which “our lay brethren” are mentioned as partaking of the Holy Communion only fifteen times a year^[26] has better manuscript authentication. But until this rule is shown to be peculiar to Dominican lay brethren, it is of no help to the argument. And so far is this from being the case, that Father Dalgairns (to whose authority Father McNabb more than once appeals) speaks of communicating fifteen times a year as “the practice of the Church at the time.”^[27]

Again, Father McNabb’s other parallels between the Rule and Dominican usages, and the mention of austerities practised by a certain man and a certain woman, have been shown by Miss Allen^[28] and by Mr. Coulton^[29] to refer to practices too widespread to carry the weight of the argument. Some of these parallels might perhaps have possessed some corroborative value, if the argument about the hours of “our lay-bretheren,” which is quite the most striking, could have been maintained. But when that has fallen, none of the others seem sufficient to support the theory.^[30]

 

Miss Hope Emily Allen has suggested that the three maidens for whom the Ancren Riwle was composed might be identified with the tribus puellis, Emmæ videlicet et Gunildæ et Christinæ, to whom the hermitage of Kilburn was granted by the Abbot and convent of Westminster between 1127 and 1135. A brief summary cannot do justice to Miss Allen’s argument, and all interested in the Ancren Riwle must read her article.^[31] In both cases the women are three inclusæ, young, noble, richly endowed, beadswomen, living under a master.^[32] The Kilburn anchoresses had been “domicellæ cameræ” to “good Queen Maud,” the wife of Henry I., the daughter of St. Margaret of Scotland, and the niece of Edgar the Atheling. The name Gunhilda, Miss Allen remarks, suggests Anglo-Danish rather than Norman origin, and all three names occur in the family of Edward the Confessor. Now all this fits in excellently with the tone of the Ancren Riwle, which surprises us by being both English and courtly at a date when we do not expect to find those two things combined.

One of the greatest services rendered by Mr. Macaulay to the study of the Rule was his discovery that the best and probably the earliest manuscript (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402) is itself a revision of the original Rule. This revision must have been made some time after the coming of the Friars to England, for it refers to “Our Friars Preachers and Our Friars Minors.”^[33] Yet the manuscript thus revised is the most correct, and so Mr. Macaulay suggests a date not earlier, but not much later, than 1230. The compiler of this revision has in view a larger number of anchoresses than the original three. The reviser gives instruction with regard to a visitation from the Bishop—and his attitude to the Bishop is peculiarly gingerly. The anchoresses are instructed to “hie forthwith towards him, and sweetly beseech him, if he asketh to see you, that ye may in that respect hold you towards him as ye have done and do to all others,” i.e. remain veiled. “If he will anyway have a sight, look that it be full short; the veil anon down, and draw you behind.”

Now between 1225 and 1231 there was dispute between the Abbey of Westminster and the Bishop of London with regard to jurisdiction over the cell of Kilburn. It was settled in 1231 by a Commission appointed by the Pope. The bishop was given the right of hearing “confessio privata” at Kilburn.

It is clear that by this date the Kilburn community had also grown to a greater number than that of the original three anchoresses. Further, both the new Kilburn regulations and the revised Rule seem to point to the necessity of stricter supervision. If we identify the two, we get a very consistent picture. As Miss Allen says: “the writer of the new passages [in the Rule] would doubtless be on the side of the abbot in the controversy,” and this, she surmises, “perhaps accounts for the somewhat suspicious manner which he shows towards the bishop.” The Abbey resisted the bishop’s claims over itself, but had to sacrifice the Kilburn sisterhood, and left it to the anchoresses to put the bishop in his place: “ȝef he wule allegate habben a sihðe, lokið þet hit beo ful scheort.” As Miss Allen says, this is “perhaps the strongest piece of evidence for the identification, apart from the similarity in the circumstances of the original inclusæ.”^[34]

 

On the other hand, there are grave difficulties in the way of the identification, and, with characteristic thoroughness, Miss Allen herself points them out.

There is a clear connection between the Ancren Riwle and St. Aelred’s De vita eremitica ad sororem liber. In one place our text of the Rule refers to this: “as Saint Aelred wrote to his sister.” Aelred was not canonised till 1191—yet the insertion of the word “Saint” might, of course, simply be the work of a scribe.^[35] But any reference to St. Aelred’s letter would seem to make the connection with the three Kilburn anchoresses difficult. For Queen Maud, to whom the three Kilburn anchoresses had been “domicellæ cameræ,” died in 1118. The domicellæ may, of course, have been only children, and have been at the queen’s court only for a few months before her death. But even so, they can hardly have been younger than St. Aelred, who was born in 1109. The tone of St. Aelred’s letter to his sister is not that of a young man, and he refers to his sister’s advanced age,^[36] as Miss Allen reminds us.^[37] Yet it is very clear from the Rule that the recluses for whom it was written were young.^[38] Here too Miss Allen agrees.,ref>P. 476.</ref> Her explanation would be that St. Aelred (who admits that he has no experience in guiding recluses, and writes from the works of “doctors”) is perhaps himself drawing upon the Ancren Riwle, in which case the citation in the Ancren Riwle “as Saint Aelred wrote to his sister” would be the addition of a scribe who had noted the resemblance of the two texts.^[39] It is a possible explanation, but not the obvious one.

“The most conspicuous obstacle” Miss Allen feels to be that “St. Bernard (either with or without the ‘Saint’) is quoted thirteen times.” However, the difficulty is not, she thinks, insuperable. The author was, she says, a contemporary of St. Bernard.

But this difficulty becomes much more serious if, as I am afraid is the case, some of these quotations come, not from St. Bernard himself, but from the Bernardine literature of the generation succeeding the saint’s death.

One of the most difficult problems will, I think, be found to lie in Part VI., “Of Penance.” “Nimeð nu god ȝeme,” says the writer of the Rule, “vor hit is almest Seint Beornardes Sentence.” This has always been explained as “it is nearly all from the Liber Sententiarum of St. Bernard.”^[40] This, however, is not the case. This section of the Rule seems to have nothing in common with Bernard’s Sententiæ or his Aliæ Sententiæ nor with the Liber Sententiarum: all these are collections of disconnected passages.^[41] In the opening pages of this Part VI.,^[42] the elect are described as of three classes: those who are pilgrims in this world; those who are dead to the world; and those who are crucified to the world. All this is a free translation of Bernard’s Seventh Lenten Sermon, De peregrino, mortuo el crucifixo:^[43] the vivid phrases of the Ancren Riwle compare very vell with Bernard’s more commonplace Latin, but that the whole discourse is based on Bernard’s sermon is undeniable. There is here no chronological impossibility, however.

The pages which follow are from a book of “Sentences,” but not one issued by Bernard.

The book of “Sentences” from which the author of the Ancren Riwle seems to have drawn is the Sententiæ Exceptæ, also known as the Declamationes, a book compiled from the sayings of St. Bernard by his secretary and biographer Geoffrey of Auxerre. From this book comes the text Vilitas et asperitas,^[44] which both treatises associate with the Vide humilitatern et laborem of the Psalmist, and which both treatises speak of as the two sides of the ladder reaching to heaven.

“Vilitas et asperitas.” Vilte and asprete, þeos two þinges, scheome and pine, ase Seint Bernard seið, beoð þe two leddre stalen þet beoð upriht to þe heouene, and bitweonen þeos stalen beoð þe tindes ivestned of alle gode þeawes, bi hwuche me climbeð to þe blisse of heouene. And forði þet David hefde þeos two stalen of þisse leddre, þauh he king were, he clomb upward and seide baldeliche to ure Louerd “Vide humilitatem meam et laborem meum.”

Vide humilitatem mean et laborem meum. Hæc ergo sint latera scalæ, vilitas et asperitas, quibus deinceps internæ virtutis et gratiæ gradus firmiter inserantur.

From the same source comes the second sentence quoted as from St. Bernard in this section of the Rule, In sedibus quies imperturbata: in judicio honoris eminentia commendatur.^[45] Here again the sentence is quoted in association with the same text of scripture in both treatises, Sedebitis et vos judicantes. These four quotations come together, within two pages of the Rule, and are similarly contiguous in the Sententiæ: this part of the Sententiæ is in fact the inspiration of much of this section of the Rule, although exact verbal coincidence is confined to the four passages I have quoted.

That connection exists between the two treatises is, I think, undeniable. It becomes therefore of importance to date the Sententiæ of Geoffrey of Auxerre, who was issuing Bernardine literature at intervals between 1145 and 1188. The Sententiæ must apparently fall between the years 1153 and 1179.^[46] Taking the earliest possible year, and assuming that the anchoresses were only domicellæ of Queen Maud as children for a few months before her death in 1118, it remains impossible that a work in which the anchoresses are referred to as youthful can have been written after the Sententiæ.

Of course it is possible that the Rule and the Sententiæ are both drawing upon some passage in Bernard’s sermons in which the two dicta of Bernard and the two verses from scripture come together in this way. (In that case the reference in the Rule to St. Bernard’s “sentence” must be taken as meaning simply St. Bernard’s “opinion,” and as involving no reference to the Sententiæ.)

But I know of no such passage. It is true that the text Sedebitis Judicantes is a favourite one of St. Bernard,^[47] and further that in one place he connects this text with the exclamation of the Psalmist, Vide humilitatem meam et laborem meum. This shame and suffering, he says (in the Sermon on the birthday of St. Benedict),^[48] will be rewarded by repose, signified in sitting, and honour, signified in judging. The underlying idea is the same as that in Geoffrey’s Sententiæ Exceptæ, and is probably the germ of Geoffrey’s more elaborate discourse. But the elaborations found in Geoffrey and in the Ancren Riwle are not found in Bernard’s Sermon on the birthday of St. Benedict. Nothing is there said of shame and suffering as the two side-pieces of the ladder, in which the other virtues are then inserted as rungs. Again, Bernard says simply, Ecce quies sessionis et honor judicii, where Geoffrey and the Ancren Riwle agree upon the wording, In sedibus quies imperturbata, in judicio dignitatis [or honoris] eminentia commendatur.

Some student well versed in St. Bernard’s works and Bernardine literature may be able to point to some earlier channel than Geoffrey of Auxerre, through which these ideas and phrases may have reached the author of the Ancren Riwle; but until it is found, I feel that there are serious chronological difficulties in supposing that the Ancren Riwle, in anything like the form in which it has come down to us, was written for the three girls, Emma, Gunilda and Christina.

But since the Rule has demonstrably undergone three adaptations (the revision of about 1230, the Latin adaptation of about 1300, and the fourteenth-century English adaptation preserved in MS. Pepys 2498), nothing could be more likely than that it had undergone yet another adaptation. Such adaptation might well have taken place in the century between the year (1127–1135) when Emma, Gunilda and Christina withdrew from the world, and the years following 1230, to which the manuscripts of the oldest form of the text belong. There is nothing therefore to prevent those who wish, from believing in what the Germans would call an Ur-Ancren-Riwle, which is now lost, but which may have been written for the three Kilburn recluses by Godwin their “master,” and have been revised by a student of the works of Bernard and Aelred into the form in which we find it in the Cottonian manuscripts, Nero and Titus. This is pure hypothesis, but something may still turn up to verify it. As Miss Allen says:

Verification sufficient to convince the doubter may come from any quarter, and in view of the wide implications it is desirable that the hypothesis should be given the widest possible publicity, in the hope of gaining the widest possible co-operation.

The present writer can only hope that evidence may be found to prove Miss Allen’s theory, and to dissipate the objections which he himself has felt bound to raise and which, as he fully realises, may arise simply from his own ignorance of the religious literature of the age. But even should it prove impossible finally to identify the three sisters of the Rule with the three devotees of Kilburn, the value of Miss Allen’s article will hardly be diminished. For that value lies above all in the way in which Miss Allen has linked up the Ancren Riwle with the religious movements of the twelfth century, and shown it as the work of a man living at a time of many strong religious influences, sensitive to all, but not giving the zeal of a partizan to any.^[49]

 

Attention must also be called to the theory of authorship propounded by Dr. Joseph Hall in the model edition of some pages of the Rule which forms a part of his quite invaluable Selections from Early Middle English. Dr. Hall thinks that a good case might be made out for St. Gilbert of Sempringham (1089–1189), who was, as he says, “famous as the greatest director of pious women in England.”^[50] When St. Gilbert died, his order of Gilbertines numbered fifteen hundred women. But is this a reason for attributing to him the Ancren Riwle? The anchoresses for whom the Ancren Riwle was written were the chief care of the writer (“mine leoue sustren, wummen me leouest”^[51]) although he was of course acquainted with other devout women (“ancren þet ich iknowe”^[52]). They belong to no order, and have been troubled with questions on that account. The writer of the Rule sees no reason why they should belong to any order, and with some indignation tells them to reply to these unwise and foolish^[53] questioners that their religion and order is that of St. James, “pure religion and undefiled … is … to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”

Now I would place no bounds to the charity of a saint, and I am prepared to believe (if evidence is forthcoming) that St. Gilbert spared time from his many and heavy duties to write for three anchoresses, who did not even belong to his order, this laborious work (“God knows, I would rather set out on a pilgrimage to Rome than begin to do it again”^[54]). The writer of the Rule was obviously a saintly man. But let us not, in the absence of evidence, diminish the number of the elect by identifying him with St. Gilbert. There are of course, as there cannot help but be, parallels between the Ancren Riwle and the Gilbertine regulations. But there are also contrasts. The emphasis laid upon cleanliness has often been noted as a peculiar feature of the Ancren Riwle (“Waschð ou hwarse ȝe habbeð neode, ase ofte ase ȝe wulleð”^[55]). The Gilbertines were warned de prohibitione balnee:

Caveatur ab omnibus nostris balneum, curn sit libidinis fomentum; nec ulla balneatur, nisi graviori labore gravata, vel medicinæ causa, vet scabie occupata.

It is impossible to conclude this rapid sketch of recent work upon the Rule without an expression of regret that G. C. Macaulay was not spared to continue the work he had so well begun. Macaulay, with his extraordinary experience of editing books in all three languages, was probably the only man who could have carried through single handed a satisfactory edition of the Rule. Meantime, his work is indispensable to all students, and though it must no doubt be in the long run superseded, it has cleared the way for a final edition of this extraordinarily interesting and important text.

1. E.g. Cambridge History of English Literature, i. 230; Dictionary of National Biography.
2. Cf. Morton, p. 88.
3. English, Thirteenth Century: First Recension: Cotton Nero A. xiv. (printed by Morton), Titus D. xviii., Cleopatra C. vi. (with some corrections from second recension), Caius College, Cambridge, 234 (a book of extracts, specimen printed by Hall); Second Recension: Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402 (extracts printed by Heuser in Anglia, xxx. 108–10, by Macaulay, and by Hall). Fourteenth Century: Vernon Manuscript, and a fragment in the possession of Lord Robartes edited by Napier in Journal of English and Germanic Philology, ii. 199; Pepys, 2498 (Magdalen College, Cambridge) is a Third Recension, discovered by Miss Paues and printed by Påhlsson, Lund, 1911.
   French: Vitellius F. vii. (damaged; beginning of the Fourteenth Century).
   Latin: Cotton Vitellius E. vii. (almost destroyed: early Fourteenth Century); Merton, Oxford, 44 (early Fourteenth Century, reported by Miss Allen, Modern Language Review, xiv. 209); Magdalen, Oxford, 67 (late Fourteenth Century); British Museum Royal 7, C. x. art. 4 (early Sixteenth Century, reported by Miss Allen, Modern Language Review, xvii. 403).
4. Wanleii Catalogus, 228 (Oxoniæ, 1705, in Hickes’ Thesaurus). He describes the Nero Manuscript as ex Latino translatus.
5. Anglia, xv. 478–498.
6. Modern Language Review, ix. 70–78.
7. Morton, p. 240.
8. Abbot Odo kept as many as twelve young monks at work copying: Unde omnes libros Ieronimi, … beati Gregorii, et quoscumque invenire potuit beati Augustini, Ambrosii, Hysidori, Bede, necnon etiam domni Anselmi … postea vero Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, tam diligenter fecit describi, ut vix in aliqua vicinarum ecclesiarum similis inveniretur bibliotheca, omnesque pro corrigendis libris suis de nostra ecclesia peterent exempleria. Pertz, SS. xiv. 313.
9. Tractatum autem beati Hilarii super Psalmos ideo non misi, quia eamdem in nostro codice quam et in vestro corruptionem inveni. Quod si et talem vultis, remandate, et mittam. Prosperum contra Cassianum, sicut nostis, non habemus, sed pro eo ad sanctum Joannem Angeliacensem in Aquitania misimus, et iterum, si necesse fuerit, mittemus. Mittite et vos nobis, si placet, majus volumen Epistolarum sancti patris Augustini: quod in ipso pene initio continet epistolas ejusdem ad sanctum Hieronymum, et sancti Hieronymi ad ipsum. Nam magnam partem nostrarum, in quadam obedientia, casu comedit ursus.
   Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxxvi. 106. Petrus Venerabilis, Cluniacensis abbas nonus, Venerabili Patri Guigoni, Carthusiensi priori (Epistolarum liber i. 24).
10. Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, vol. ix., The Original Language of the Ancren Riwle (1924).
11. Morton, p. 96. The same proverb is repeated in the additions of the revised “Corpus” text (Modern Language Review, ix. 467).
12. Morton, pp. 62, 332.
13. Part of one passage is obliterated in the French.
14. Nabbe ȝe þis also of Ruffin þe deouel, Beliales broðer, in our Englische boc of Seinte Margarete (Morton, p. 244).
    Morton mistranslates as “our English book,” but he corrects the error in the glossary: “our English book” would be ure Englische boc.
15. Nauez vous cest ausi de Rufon le diable frere a belial en vostre liure de seinte margarete, fol 37, v.
16. Ker: English Literature—Mediæval, 55.
17. Calendered by Davis, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, Oxford, 1913.
18. Riley, Memorials of London, 1868.
19. Two fragmentary.
20. Modern Language Review, xi. 1–8.
21. Introductory Essay to Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection.
22. Morton, p. 24.
23. Ibid., p. 286.
24. Modern Language Review, ix. 73.
25. Morton, p. 20.
26. Ibid., p. 412.
27. The Spiritual Life of Mediæval England, p. xiv., in Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, 1901.
28. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxxiii. 538–546.
29. Modern Language Review, xvii. 66–69.
30. Father McNabb answers Miss Allen’s objections in the Modern Language Review, xv. 406–9. He produces additional evidence, turning upon the use of the Ave Maria. The value of some of this argument is difficult for laymen to estimate, as references are not given; the rest has been proved by Mr. Coulton (Modern Language Review, xvii. 68) to have no force. Miss Allen’s answer to Father McNabb’s reply is moderate, and, I think, convincing (Modern Language Review, xvi. 316–322).
31. The Origin of the Ancren Riwle, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxxii. 1918, pp. 474–546.
32. Miss Allen in Modern Language Review, xvi. 1921, pp. 316–322, The Ancren Riwle and Kilburn Priory.
33. It is noteworthy that the original Rule nowhere speaks of “Friars.” This original Rule is found in Cotton Titus D. xviii. and in Cotton Nero A. xiv. (the latter manuscript contains the passage about the hours of “our lay bretheren” which is peculiar to itself, and demonstrably an interpolation). ‘These two manuscripts are of the first half of the thirteenth century. A rather later manuscript, Cotton Cleopatra C. vi. gives the original Rule, but with extracts from the later recension copied in the margin. Considering the bulk of the original Rule, the absence of any mention of “Friars” would seem strange, unless we date it before their arrival in England. This certainly, as Miss Allen remarks (p. 543), makes very difficult the theory of Father McNabb that a Friar is the author of the original Rule.
34. P. 494.
35. It is, however, found in the original version, in all three MSS.: Seint Aldret, Nero; Seint Ailreade, Titus; Seint Ailret, Cleopatra.
36. Nulla vobis de macie vultus, de exilitate brachiorum, de cutis asperitate sit cura. Hæc tibi, soror (gratias deo), dicenda non fuerant: sed quia nec solum propter te, sed etiam propter adolescentiores, quæ similem vitam tuo consilio arripere gestiunt, hanc tibi formulam tradi volusti, hæc interserenda putavi.

    Migne, xxxii. 1454. St. Aelred, De vita eremitica ad sororem liber.

37. P. 530.
38. See, especially, Morton, p. 6.
39. P. 529.
40. So Morton; and Hall, Selections, ii. 375.
41. The Liber Sententiarum (§ 142, see Migne, Pat. Lat. clxxxiv. section 783, column 1151), and the Ancren Riwle (Morton, p. 356) both give a mystical interpretation of the wheels of the Chariot of Elijah. But it is not the same.
42. Morton, pp. 348–354.
43. Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxxiii. (vol. 2 of St. Bernard’s Works, § 826, col. 183).
44. Morton 354; cf. Gaufridi Abbatis Declamationes, xxxvi., being section 301 or column 460 in Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxxiv. (vol. 3 of St. Bernard’s works).
45. Morton, p. 359; in Gaufridi Abbalis Declamationes this comes at the end of cap. xl., being section 303 or column 463 in Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxxiv. (vol. 3 of St. Bernard’s works). The only difference is that the Bernardine tract has dignitatis where the Rule has honoris.
46. The date usually given is between 1155 and 1161, because in one manuscript Geoffrey is spoken of as Abbot of Igni, a post he can have held only in these years (Histoire littéraire de la France, xiv. 445). The argument does not seem very conclusive, for in another manuscript Cardinal Henry of Pisa, to whom the work is dedicated, is described as Romanæ Ecclesiæ subdiaconum, an office he was holding in 1148. What seems conclusive is that whilst, in dedicating the book to Henry, Geoffrey takes responsibility for the wording, he insists that the sense is Bernard’s, except in so far as his own ignorance or forgetfulness may have corrupted it. He asks for Henry’s criticism. During the life of St. Bernard, when Geoffrey as secretary and companion was in constant touch with his master, this would surely have been unreasonable; after the death of Bernard in 1153 it is natural, especially as Henry had himself been a disciple of Bernard, and monk of Clairvaux some time between 1148 and 1150. Henry became Cardinal in 11 50 and died in 1179. (Chacon, Vitæ Pontificum, i. 1047–8, Romæ, 1677.)
47. It comes, for example, in the eighth sermon on qui habitat (Migne, Pat. Lat., clxxxiii. vol. 2 of St. Bernard’s Works, § 849, col. 215); again in Sermo v. pro dominica 1 Novembris, § 950; col. 354; again in the Sermones de diversis, § 1151, col. 628.
48. §§ 970, 971, col. 381.
49. Modern Language Review, xvi. 322.
50. Selections, ii. 375.
51. Morton, p. 116.
52. Ibid., p. 192.
53. Unweote, unwise. Morton, pp. 8, 10.
54. Morton, p. 430.
55. Morton, p. 424. The Corpus Manuscript adds Nes neauer fulðe godd leof.