| Paper 1234-b | Some Characteristics of Middle English Translations of the Ps-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi
(Language: English)
Mayumi Taguchi, Faculty of Human Environment, Department of Culture & Communication, Osaka Sangyo University
Index terms: Biblical Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Manuscripts and Palaeography |
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| Paper 1234-c | William Bonde, Orthodox Reformer of Syon Abbey
(Language: English)
Brandon Alakas, Department of Fine Arts & Humanities, University of Alberta, Augustana
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Lay Piety, Monasticism, Religious Life |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
While the central argument of the Proslogion dropped from view in the generations after Anselm's death, its final two chapters had such a wide circulation as to be nearly invisible for their ubiquity, in both Latin literature and in the vernacular. A look towards Anselm's sources, especially the City of God, suggests that the joys of heaven imagined in these two chapters a self-diagnostic exercise to measure competing human desires. The appearance of this excerpt from the Proslogion in catechesis and penitential manuals indicates that this was indeed what Anselm’s meditation was used to accomplish.
Paper -b:
My paper discusses Middle English translations of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, specifically the unique version contained in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125 (which I am editing for the Middle English Texts series [Heidelberg] in collaboration with Yoko Iyeiri).The Meditationes Vitae Christi was immensely popular and influential throughout Europe in the late Middle Ages. Its English translations are mostly faithful to the Latin original, but the changes introduced to them would reveal some aspects of 15th-century Christocentric and Marian devotions in England. My discussion will also include another passion narrative in MS Pepys 2125, an English translation of 'Les Quatre requêtes de Notre-Dame a Jésus'.
Paper -c:
William Bonde is a critical figure within the history of Syon Abbey's resistance to the Reformation. In this paper, I will discuss the ways in which his Directory of Conscience (1527), a treatise targeted at both religious and lay readers, played a significant role in the Abbey's opposition to Protestant polemic by catering to the demands of pious laypeople seeking to live a richer spiritual life. My paper will investigate how Bonde responds to these challenges by adopting new attitudes toward the press and the vernacular while, at the same time, circumscribing lay devotion within fixed limits subordinate to ecclesiastical authority.
Paper -d:
The functional purposes of visionary and mystical works within late medieval popular devotional culture have not been often explored. However, examining the independent textual transmission of instructions for prayers that are introduced by visionary works provides direct evidence for these works' intended devotional functionality. Based on manuscript research, I suggest that these works' instructions were actively exchanged between England and the Continent, particularly on behalf of non-Latinate audiences. I examine how the English devotion of The Revelation of the Hundred Paternosters - hitherto thought to survive only in one copy - enjoyed a longstanding popularity within a devotional culture of laymen, semi-religious, and religious women in England, the Low Countries and German areas by its transmission at monasteries associated with the Carthusian Order and multiple female convents.
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