Examining the versatility of domestic imagery in medieval devotional texts.
By Dr. Louise Campion
Medieval Historian
One of the defining characteristics of the figure of Christ in the gospels is, this chapter argues, his homelessness. In the gospels of both Luke and Matthew, Christ declares his commitment to living outside domestic walls, reminding his followers that, ‘the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests, but the son of man hath not where to lay his head’.1 These biblical verses underscore the importance of Christ’s identity as a nomadic preacher by suggesting that those who wish to be devoted to him ought to abandon their own home, too, exchanging their families for a new spiritual kinship network. Having remarked upon his own lack of dwelling place, Christ tells a man who asks for leave to remain at home to bury his father to ‘follow me’;2 this simple instruction draws the potential believer into the mobile lifestyle of the unsheltered Christ. In the Bible, the distance between the believer and the domestic sphere is one of the hallmarks of Christian devotion. The household is left behind, with the focus shifted to the much vaster landscape that Christ and his followers must navigate as they fulfil their spiritual mission. This biblical marginalization of domestic space is considerably less apparent, however, in numerous late Middle English devotional texts. These works, in a significant departure from the conventions of the Gospel, craft a version of Christ who is notably keen to go home. In response to this divine desire for homely enclosure, the writers of these texts present their readers with allegories and metaphors that draw heavily upon the language of household space. The proper preparation and configuration of these imagined domestic spheres, into which Christ might be welcomed, is framed as a crucial component of their readers’ devotional practice.
The discussion in this chapter will have two primary strands. First, two allegories of household space taken from two fifteenth-century Middle English texts will be examined. Second, the ways in which different sets of readers might have responded to these domestic images will be considered. The first devotional-domestic allegory appears in the first book of The Doctrine of the Hert, a Middle English translation of a thirteenth-century Latin religious treatise, directed towards an audience of enclosed nuns.3 The second allegory is taken from Bridget of Sweden’s Liber Celestis, a vast collection of over 700 of the saint’s visionary writings.4 These allegories are fascinating to compare, in part, because they are so very different. In the Doctrine, the author allegorizes the heart of the enclosed religious woman as a household that awaits the arrival of Christ, a knight, who is battle-weary in the wake of his tireless fight against sin. The proper preparation of this imagined domestic sphere is achieved through the careful cleaning of the household and the subsequent sparse furnishing of the space. Even if Christ, the noblest visitor of all, is coming to stay, one should still ensure that the house is modestly arrayed. Bridget, however, formulates both the figure of Christ and the proper configuration of domestic space in altogether different terms. In the Liber, Christ is not a noble visitor, but a prospective spiritual spouse for Bridget. The home that must be prepared is, therefore, the nuptial household, which must be readied for the celestial couple’s union. In a notable departure from the domestic economy of the Doctrine, Christ instructs Bridget to fill no fewer than three houses with copious material goods, the success of their spiritual marriage determined by abundance, rather than modesty.
The entirely divergent character of these household allegories shows the versatility of domestic imagery in medieval devotional texts, with each author suffusing it with wholly different sets of imaginative resonances. Some of these divergences, it is worth noting, probably stem from the fact that the Doctrine and the Liber are drawn from two different genres. As the Doctrine is a guidance text for a convent community, it is unsurprising to find that many of its metaphors and allegories serve a didactic purpose, with a focus on the importance of modesty and the careful regulation of the body. The Liber, by contrast, is a visionary work, its content determined by God’s authorization of Bridget as a channel for his divine word. What yokes these texts together, though, is their shared readers – a point which will be elaborated upon later. They were read both within conventual walls and beyond the spaces of religious enclosure, as they were also encountered by women lay readers in their own homes. In drawing out the thematic and symbolic divergences in these texts’ household allegories, this chapter draws attention to the multifaceted web of domestic resonances that their mutual readers are confronted with. Both texts cultivate a domestic space that Christ is keen to enter, but the reasons for his desire to come home are markedly contested.
Before any detailed comparison of the domestic allegories of the Doctrine and the Liber, it is necessary to sketch an outline of the character of English fifteenth-century domesticity, which will shape an understanding of the cultural context in which these household allegories are encountered. It is, of course, very difficult to give a universally applicable definition of late medieval English domesticity. As remains the case today, the character of the home in which one dwells is dependent on such factors as wealth, social status and its location, whether urban or rural. With regard to the contingent of the texts’ shared readership who encountered the Doctrine and Liber at home, the focus here will be a set of women readers that might be broadly described as bourgeois, or middle-class. Therefore, the characterization of domesticity in this chapter will be specifically applicable to this social context. In recent years, there have been several useful examinations of medieval domestic space.5 These studies draw a whole range of conclusions about the character of medieval domesticity, but one of the most relevant to the argument here concerns its emotional pull. A useful summary of the intimate connection between the medieval home and its inhabitants was given by Maryanne Kowaleski and Jeremy Goldberg, who remarked that: ‘In the context of the English later middle ages … the sense of familiarity, of intimacy, of emotional warmth and security that home and homli conveyed to contemporaries is perhaps a useful starting point for understanding ‘medieval’ domesticity’.6 A similar perspective was given by Jennifer Deane, who suggested that, ‘Of all the ideas [that shape] medieval imaginations, none was more potent than that of the home and its associations with heart and hearth, bread and bedchamber, warmth and welcome’.7 From these critical formulations of the medieval domestic sphere as a space defined by intimacy and comfortable familiarity, one might deduce that the household had a considerable hold over the late medieval imagination. This emotional connection between the household and its dwellers meant that the furnishing and adornment of the home was a particularly important task.
One snapshot of householders’ emotional and financial investment in their domestic space is the late medieval fashion for purchasing cushions. This commercial trend, which was particularly prevalent among the emergent bourgeois urban classes, was explored by Goldberg, who noted that, ‘cushions would appear to be a predominantly urban phenomenon from at least the third decade of the fourteenth century until the second half of the fifteenth century’.8 As this taste for cushions is especially notable among urban dwellers, one might reasonably conclude that these newly popular soft furnishings were a key commodity in the emerging mercantile economy. The involvement of urban women in these commercial exchanges, and by extension, it might tentatively be suggested, the purchase of cushions, is worth noting. According to Goldberg, bourgeois women were far more involved in the commercial activities that sustained the ‘market economy’ than their country-dwelling counterparts, who were excluded ‘from such essential agrarian activities as ploughing, mowing, and carting’, practices that underpinned rural economies.9 Goldberg went on to note that this greater involvement in the town economy afforded bourgeois women ‘a more significant voice than their rural sisters in deciding priorities within the household budget’.10 Women had a particularly significant influence upon the configuration of the more ‘intimate’ rooms in the house, such as the bedchambers;11 these rooms are, moreover, spaces in which cushions are likely to be placed. It is in this context, therefore, of the household as a space to which one feels a burgeoning emotional connection, and for which one has a financial responsibility to adorn as one sees fit, that fifteenth-century women readers encounter the domestic allegories of the Doctrine and the Liber.
At this point it is worth reiterating that the Doctrine and the Liber are very likely to have had mutual women readers. The primary evidence for the texts’ shared audience is drawn from the will of Margaret Purdans, apparently written in 1481, who left both the Doctrine and what is described as an ‘English book of St. Bridget’ to Bruisyard, a Franciscan nunnery in Suffolk.12 Purdans, a bourgeois widow, lived in Norwich, Norfolk, and was a member of a social milieu that Mary Erler termed a ‘devout society’, made up of ‘the men and women who were part of Norwich’s governing class; with the city’s hermits, anchorites, and priests; with several Cambridge doctors and masters of divinity, representatives of a learned, clerical culture’.13 Erler characterized Purdans, here, as a woman with a web of connections to the various facets of Norwich society, both secular and religious. Purdans’s quotidian life, though, was spent within the walls of the secular household; this is further evidenced by her will, in which she bequeaths an item of her domestic furnishing, a cupboard.14 The relative comfort of Purdans’s life at home, discernible in part from the fact that she had such items as books and cupboards to specify in her will, stands in stark contrast to that of the Franciscan sisters who became the readers of her bequeathed volumes. To briefly introduce a point to which this chapter returns later: with their order rooted in the values of poverty and mendicancy, the nuns at Bruisyard encountered the domestic allegories of the Liber and the Doctrine in an altogether different cultural and spatial context.15 The passing of the texts between these dissimilar spaces would, therefore precipitate a range of responses to the two allegories’ divergent resonances. The domestic sphere, which as I have previously suggested is an emotionally significant space, would therefore present the shared readers of both texts with something of an interpretive challenge, as it is simultaneously yoked to both frugality and copiousness.
Now that some of the broader context in which the Doctrine and the Liber were read has been outlined, the content of their domestic allegories can be examined in more detail. It is hoped that analysing the significant differences between their symbolic resonances will underscore the suggestion that the versatility and flexibility of the imagined space of the household could pose its readers with the challenge of navigating its multifarious meanings. This analysis begins with the Doctrine and its allegory of household scarcity. The text is split into seven books, each of which is devoted to a different spiritual gift that will prepare the reader’s heart for union with God. Book One of the Doctrine, which is the longest of the seven, details the way in which the ‘mynche’ might make use of the gift of dread in the readying of her heart for spiritual union. Over the course of this first book, the Doctrine author routinely makes use of the language and imagery of domesticity.16 Alongside the homely image that is the subject of discussion here, the author of the treatise also draws his reader into the kitchen, with the heart allegorized as meat to be roasted for Christ’s consumption.17 Later in the first chapter, the preparation of the heart is likened to that of a bride who must dress herself for her impending marriage; while this image might not be as explicitly yoked to household space as the other examples discussed in this chapter, it is inflected with what might be described as a domestic mode of intimacy.
As briefly outlined in the introduction to this chapter, the domestic allegory that is the primary focus here sees the heart of the enclosed religious woman reimagined as a household that awaits the arrival of the tired and injured soldier-Christ. Those who do not gladly prepare the domestic sphere for its celestial visitor are, the Doctrine author suggests,
unkynde wrecchis … that wil not gladly receyve suche a champion into oure house of oure hertis, the whiche for oure love wagyd batayle with oure enemy and had the victorie and the maystry, comyng fro the batayle al forsprenclid with blood, blew, wery, and woundid.18
Great emphasis is placed, in this rebuke, upon the importance of cultivating one’s spiritual hospitality. To refuse the visiting Christ a place to rest when one is aware of his state of abjection would amount to a refusal to acknowledge the profound sacrifice that he has made. Before the reader can welcome her guest, however, she must prepare the house of her heart to receive him. The transformation of the household of the heart into a space fit to welcome the noblest visitor of all is not, as one might perhaps expect, achieved through its elaborate adornment; no cushions are arrayed in the holy parlour. Rather, the Doctrine’s author focuses upon the careful cleaning and tidying of the home, and its subsequent modest furnishing. This cleaning is an allegorization of the practice of confession, with the well-regulated spiritual body likened to an attentively tidied household: ‘Cnowleche of the synnes be þe mouthe in confessioun is noþing ellis but puttyng ought filthes of the hous of oure herte be the dore of the mowth with þe brome of the tunge’.19 This compartmentalizing of the reader’s body into a set of recognizably domestic tools is indicative of a focus upon the importance of self-regulation. Just as one ought to ensure that a household is clean and tidy prior to the arrival of a very important guest, so must one take responsibility for practising confession.20 The author of the Doctrine’sencouragement of the self-managed cleansing of the soul is likely to be a product of the 1215 decision of the Fourth Lateran Council to make yearly confession mandatory for every Christian.21 In yoking confession to the quotidian tasks of the well-kept household, the Doctrine’s author renders this most salient of devotional practices as routine as sweeping, thereby positing it as a steadfast component of his readers’ lives.
Once the household has been expunged of its sinful dirt, it must then be modestly furnished in order to accommodate the visiting Christ. The Doctrine advises a notably sparse adornment of the domestic sphere, suggesting that it should contain just four crucial items:
thow must ordeyne for hym gostly thees foure thinges: a bed, a met-table, a stole, and a candilstik with light. By þis bedde þou schalt undirstond pees and rest of conscience, by þis mete table penaunce, by þis stole þe dome of þin owen conscience, and by þis candelstik with light þe knowleche of þi conscience.22
This allegory of selective spiritual furnishing is influenced by the Old Testament tale of the elderly widow who was instructed by Elijah the prophet to prepare her home to welcome him as her guest.23 The emulation of the hospitality of this biblical precedent is achieved through the modest adornment of the domestic sphere, with each piece of furniture carefully selected to have an explicit resonance of penitential preparation. It might be suggested, therefore, that the sparseness of this imagined household encourages a specific and emphatic focus upon the preparation for confession; there are no extraneous cushions or consumer goods to distract the repentant reader from welcoming Christ into her newly cleansed heart.
As previously noted, the Doctrine’s rendering of the home as a space that needs to be meticulously cleaned before being modestly refilled with the specific furniture of penance is a world away from Bridget’s allegory of copious acquisition in the Liber. Before looking at this allegory in detail, it is worth pointing out that Bridget’s text is full of images that might be read as rooted in the practical experience of domestic life. This is unsurprising when one considers the fact that, prior to her multiple pilgrimages across Europe and the Holy Land and the foundation of her globally successful Bridgettine Order, Bridget had lived as an aristocratic wife and mother of eight children.24 She had, therefore, extensive experience of managing a large household and estate. To give just one example of Bridget’s recourse to the vocabulary of domesticity, found in book three of the Liber, the saint receives a vision of St. Agnes, who informs her that God is a washerwoman.25 Just as the household labour of washing cloth rinses its stains and renders it white once again, so God washes the soul of sin, restoring it to its unsullied state.26
By far the longest and most sustained invocation of domestic language in the Liber is that of the preparation of three houses, which will be occupied by Bridget and Christ, her spiritual spouse.27 As this is a lengthy and detailed allegory, a brief summary of its contents is given, before some of its key details are pulled out to discuss in greater depth. In the vision, which appears in Book Two of the text, Christ appears before Bridget and asks her to stock three houses with the necessary goods to sustain them throughout their nuptial union. The first house must contain sufficient goods of bodily sustenance, namely, bread, water and salt. This nourishing bread is not, Christ specifies, the eucharistic bread of the altar, but the bread of ‘good will’, the consumption of which aids the expulsion of sin, leaving the body morally cleansed. This bread will be seasoned with the salt of divine wisdom. The second house must be filled with different kinds of cloth. The first of these, linen, symbolizes the peaceful good will that the devout soul ought to manifest towards a neighbour, or, indeed, God. Bridget must also acquire cloth made from the skins of dead animals, which symbolizes merciful actions that emulate the deeds of the saints. Finally, the house must contain expensive silk, made by worms, which is emblematic of abstinence from sin. The third and final house needs to be filled with a range of agricultural tools, livestock, and two separate containers, in which should be stored different kinds of liquid. The first container should hold thinner liquids, which are water, oil and wine, while the second is reserved for thick, viscous substances, including mustard and meal. These thick liquids symbolize evil thoughts, while the runnier liquids symbolize the opposite, and are resonant of good and pure thoughts. Among the tools should be a plough, which represents good reason, while an axe should also be kept; this symbolizes the introspective examination of the devout soul’s intentions. Bridget’s stocks of animals ought to include horses, and these beasts will carry the soul towards God during the act of confession. Once the houses have been filled, Bridget must ensure that her hoarded goods are carefully protected. Her estate must, therefore, be fitted with a door of hope, which hangs upon two hinges, one of which symbolizes the avoidance of collapsing into despair, while the other is a rebuke of presumptuous behaviour. The door is then fully secured with a lock of perfect charity.
Bridget’s allegory of plentiful stocking and material acquisition sees a broad spectrum of devotional commonplaces, from the importance of good works to the practice of confession, mapped onto a landscape that resembles a vast homestead. The allegory might be read, therefore, as an interweaving of Bridget’s secular and spiritual experience. This melding of the household and the holy is particularly in evidence in the introduction to the three houses image, which sees Christ start a conversation with his spiritual bride-to-be about the preparation of their connubial homes:
I, þe same þat spekis with þe, am maker of all þinge of noght, and noght made. Bifor me was noþinge, ne mai eftir me, for I was euir and euir sall be. I ame also lorde, whose power mai noȝt be withstonden, and of whome is all power and lordeshipe. I speke to þe as a man to his wife.28
This characterization of Christ underscores his profound power and majesty. Christ is the creator of everything on earth, and therefore of all the goods that will fill the three houses that he intends to share with his spiritual spouse. By the end of his narration of his power over the world and all that is in it, Christ wishes to speak to Bridget on a much more domestic level, as a husband would communicate with his spouse. It is as though Christ’s colossal power over the broadest imaginable space, stretching across time to encompass even those places and items that are not yet created, is ultimately translated into the patriarchal authority of an aristocratic husband over the finite realm of his estate. It might, furthermore, be interpreted as the legitimizing of Bridget’s fantasy of material acquisition, which could be otherwise understood as demonstrating an excessive interest in worldly goods. Indeed, elsewhere in the allegory, Bridget appears somewhat uneasy with her consistent valorization of material acquisition. The narration of the filling of the second house, which should be stocked with different kinds of cloth, contains an interjection from the Virgin Mary, in which the celestial mother-in-law reminds Bridget that St. Lawrence never coveted luxurious fabrics, as they might constitute a distraction from the bodily agonies suffered by the crucified Christ.29 The fact that Bridget introduces the allegory by having Christ translate his omnipotence into the power of a wealthy husband, who would, of course, invest significantly in material goods salves the potential criticism of its somewhat consumerist imagery. Bridget’s gathering of the items that will ensure the protection and cleansing of the devout soul is also a celebration of the world, both material and that not yet made, that Christ created.
The persistent association of virtue and a successful spiritual marriage with the processes of acquisition and filling is subsequently underscored in Bridget’s rendering of the act of confession, which departs significantly from the penitential metaphors of the Doctrine. As suggested in the broad summary of the allegory’s content, the animals that Bridget is instructed to put into the third house symbolize confessional practice, as they carry the soul closer to God. Before they can set off on this most important of spiritual journeys, however, they must be plentifully fed:
Sho bi confession is ilke dai more nere and more nere vnto God, for right as a beste, þe ofter and bettir he is fede, þe strongere he is to bere a charge, and þe fairer to þe sight, right so confession, þe oftir þat it is made and þe more beseli, bothe of þe smallest sinnes and gretest, þe more it helpis and forthirs þe saule and makes it clerer in þe siȝt of God.30
While the Doctrine conceives of confession in terms of the domestic labour of emptying the self of impurities, leaving behind only the most essential spiritual furniture, Bridget understands it as a practice through which one ensures that the soul is copiously stocked with virtues. When one undertakes confession, and the soul moves ever closer to God, the material goods that one has gathered facilitate this spiritual progression; the well-filled household underpins successful penance. Furthermore, the beast itself has been ‘filled’, in a sense, with sufficient food to prevent it from faltering in the face of the onslaught of sin. Despite her occasional anxieties about appearing excessively interested in material goods, Bridget’s allegory of the three houses repeatedly conflates material and spiritual wealth, as the well-stocked household provides the most important tools for ensuring a successful union with Christ.
As this chapter moves towards its conclusion, the aim is not simply to make the somewhat facile observation that different allegories have divergent resonances; this is bound to be the case. It is inevitable, of course, that the male writer of the Doctrine, a penitential manual, takes a wholly different approach to the crafting of his text from an author such as Bridget, a female visionary, as the works have such different purposes. While the author of the Doctrine is tasked with guiding his female readers towards eventual union with God, Bridget is recording the visions she receives directly from the divine. Rather, the suggestion in this chapter is that one of the most fascinating aspects of domestic imagery in Middle English devotional literature is that the household sphere has such a variable set of symbolic resonances. Very often, this most familiar and emotionally significant space transcends the psychological borders of the real and the imaginary – a point expanded upon as this chapter draws to a close.
When the author of the Doctrine instructs his reader to welcome Christ into the house of her heart, might a reader such as Purdans model her imagination of this domestic space upon the material one in which she is undertaking her reading? Upon reading Bridget’s allegory of the three houses in the Liber, Purdans might perhaps map this fantasy of material acquisition onto the mercantile culture of the town in which she lived, this urban economy enabling her to purchase goods for her own house. For the Franciscan nuns at Bruisyard, however, who encountered these texts in the convent following Purdans’s bequest, reading about Bridget’s lavishly arrayed marital homes would be grounded in the realm of the imaginary. This point is emphatically underscored when one examines a fifteenth-century rule for minoresses, which defines quotidian life and the arrangement of living space in terms of a steadfast commitment to material poverty. In a discussion of sleeping arrangements in the convent, the author of the rule instructs only the most modest furnishing, coupled with sparse adornments:
Eche may haue a sacke i-fillid wiþ strawe or wiþ hey, oþer ellis a cowche in stede of a sacke & a wollin cloþe buystus I-spred aboue & a cusschin I-couerid wiþ linnyn cloþe, I-stoppid wiþ hey or strawe or grete wolle or federis, like as þe abbesse schal ordeyne.31
This is a carefully regulated domestic sphere, perhaps closer in character to the imagined household of the Doctrine, in which comfort is minimal and devotion to the scarcity that defines the Franciscan rule is manifest in one’s rejection of material goods. Most interestingly, the author of the rule advises that the minoress might own a cushion. Given its status as a consumer item that might be interpreted as a marker of wealth, this seems a rather risky item to place within the minoress’s domestic sphere, as it pulls her towards a world that she ought to have left behind, and that she might now only experience imaginatively. The vocabulary of domesticity, from the broader space of the household to the items that adorn it, has a markedly versatile set of resonances. These multifarious meanings would challenge the fifteenth-century female readers of devotional texts such as the Doctrine and the Liber to navigate the differences between their real and imaginary experience of the household sphere, during a cultural moment that saw the emotional pull of ‘home’ grow ever greater.
Endnotes
- Luke IX: 58; Matthew VIII: 20.
- Luke IX: 59. This is just one example of multiple instances in which Christ asks those who listen to his preaching to ‘follow’ him. For further examples, see Matthew IV: 19, Matthew XVI: 24, Mark I: 17, Mark X: 21 and Luke XVIII: 22.
- The Middle English Doctrine is extant in four manuscripts: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS. McClean 132; Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS. B.14.15; Durham, University Library, MS. Cosin V.III.24 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc 330. For the most comprehensive discussions of both the Latin and vernacular versions of the Doctrine, see A Companion to the Doctrine of the Hert: the Middle English Translation and its Latin and European Contexts, ed. D. Renevey and C. Whitehead (Exeter, 2010).
- The full text of Bridget’s Middle English Liber survives in two manuscripts: British Library, Cotton MSS. Claudius B. I. and MS. Julius F. II. On the popularity of the Middle English Liber in 15th-century England, see R. Ellis, ‘“Flores ad Fabricandam … Coronam”: an investigation into the uses of the revelations of St. Bridget of Sweden in fifteenth-century England’, Medium Aevum, li (1982), 163–86.
- E.g., see Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England, ed. M. Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg (Cambridge, 2008); The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. J. M. Bennett and R. M. Karras (Oxford, 2013), pp. 179–278.
- ‘Introduction. Medieval domesticity: home, housing and household’, in Kowaleski and Goldberg, Medieval Domesticity, pp. 1–13, at p. 4.
- J. Deane, ‘Pious domesticities’, in Bennett and Karras, The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, pp. 262–78, at p. 262.
- P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘The fashioning of bourgeois domesticity in later medieval England: a material culture perspective’, in Kowaleski and Goldberg, Medieval Domesticity, pp. 124–44, at p. 127.
- Goldberg, ‘Bourgeois domesticity’, p. 137. On the relationship between women and work in the context of medieval England, see P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire c.1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 82–157. (For further discussion of the subject of women’s roles and influence in the late medieval household and community, see C. Kennan, ‘On the threshold? The role of women in Lincolnshire’s late medieval parish guilds’, this volume).
- Goldberg, ‘Bourgeois domesticity’, p. 137.
- Goldberg, ‘Bourgeois domesticity’, pp. 137–8. On bourgeois women’s role in the configuration of their households, see S. R. Jones, ‘Women’s influence on the design of urban homes’, in Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. M. C. Erler and M. Kowaleski (Ithaca, N.Y., 2003), pp. 190–211.
- L. Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Cambridge, 2004), p. 229. For further detail about the books that were owned by Bruisyard, see D. N. Bell, What Nuns Read: Books and Libraries in Medieval English Nunneries (Kalamazoo, Mich., 1995), pp. 121–2.
- M. C. Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002), p. 68.
- Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety, p. 71.
- On the Franciscan order, see J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford, 1968).
- For discussions of domestic imagery in the Doctrine, see C. Whitehead, Castles of the Mind: a Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff, 2003), pp. 123–8; D. Renevey, ‘Household chores in The Doctrine of the Hert: affective spirituality and subjectivity’, in The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c.850–c.1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body, ed. C. Beattie, A. Maslakovic and S. R. Jones (Turnhout, 2003), pp. 167–85.
- For a detailed analysis of this kitchen allegory, see V. Gillespie, ‘Meat, metaphor and mysticism: cooking the books in The Doctrine of the Hert’, in Renevey and Whitehead, A Companion to The Doctrine of the Hert, pp. 131–58.
- ‘unkind and ungenerous, who will not happily welcome such a champion into the house of our hearts. For love of us, he waged battle against the enemy, and won the victory and majesty. He comes from the battle, sprinkled with blood, ashen, weary, and wounded’ (The Doctrine of the Hert, ed. C. Whitehead, D. Renevey and A. Mouron (Exeter, 2010), p. 6 (ll. 51–5)). All translations from Middle English are mine, unless otherwise stated. Citations are given first by page number, and then, if applicable, by line numbers.
- ‘The understanding of sin, via the mouth during confession, is nothing else but the expulsion of the filth of the house of our heart, by the door of the mouth, with the broom of the tongue’ (Whitehead, Renevey and Mouron, Doctrine, p. 7, ll. 78–80).
- This allegorization of confession as an act of domestic labour has echoes of a similar allegory in the early 13th-century Middle English guide for anchoresses, Ancrene Wisse: ‘Schrift schal beon ihal … Þe poure widewe hwen ha wule hire hus cleansin, ha gedereð al þe greaste on an heap alre earst, and schuueð hit ut þenne. Þrefter kimeð eft aȝein and heapeð eft to gederes þat wes ear ileauet and schuued hit ut efter’ (Ancrene Wisse, edited from MS Corpus Christi College Cambridge 402, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien (Early English Text Soc., original ser., ccxlix, Oxford, 1962), p. 161). ‘Confession must be whole … When the poor widow wants to clean her house, she first gathers all the dust in a heap, and then sweeps it out. Then she comes back and heaps what has been left together again, and sweeps it out after’ (Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works, trans. A. Savage and N. Watson (New York, 1991), pp. 163–4).
- On the penitential manuals that encouraged this introspective management of the soul, see L. E. Boyle, ‘The Fourth Lateran Council and manuals of popular theology’, in The Popular Theology of Medieval England, ed. T. J. Heffernan (Knoxville, Tenn., 1985), pp. 30–43.
- ‘You must devoutly prepare these four things for his arrival: a bed, a dining table, a seat and a candlestick with light. By this bed you should understand peace and tranquillity of your conscience; by the dining table, penance, by the seat the judgment of your own conscience; and by the candlestick with light the understanding of your conscience’ (Whitehead, Renevey and Mouron, Doctrine, pp. 9, ll. 151–6).
- Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, p. 124; 1 Kings XVII: 13.
- For a biography of Bridget, see B. Morris, St. Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge, 1999).
- The Liber Celestis of St. Bridget of Sweden, ed. R. Ellis (Early English Text Soc., old ser., ccxci, Oxford, 1987), p. 244, ll. 9–15.
- On this domestic image, see Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, p. 132.
- For a discussion of Bridget’s lengthiest domestic allegory, see Whitehead, Castles of the Mind, pp. 132–6; and Morris, St. Birgitta,pp. 20–1. Both of these accounts comment upon the extent to which Bridget draws upon her own experience of the aristocratic household in her crafting of this set of visions.
- ‘I, who speaks to you now, am the creator of all that is made and not yet made. Before me there was nothing, nor anything after me, for I was ever and ever shall be. I am also [the] lord, whose power cannot be withstood, from whom comes all power and lordship. I speak to you as a man would speak to his wife’ (Ellis, Liber, p. 180, ll. 31–5).
- Ellis, Liber, pp. 183–4, ll. 1–13, 28–36.
- ‘Through confession, one draws closer to God every day. Just as an animal is stronger against a charge the better he is fed, as well as fairer to look at, frequent and diligent confession of both the smallest and biggest sins will help the soul to be more visible to God’ (Ellis, Liber, p. 188, ll. 7–12).
- ‘Each [minoress] may have a sleeping bag filled with straw or hay, or a small mattress instead, with a rough woollen cloth spread over it, and a cushion covered with linen cloth, stuffed with hay, straw, wool or feathers, as the abbess will determine’ (A Fifteenth-Century Courtesy Book and Two Fifteenth-Century Franciscan Rules, ed. R. W. Chambers and W. M. Seton (Early English Text Soc., old ser., ccxci, Oxford, 1914), p. 85, ll. 15–19).
Chapter 11 (171-183) from Gender in Medieval Places, Spaces and Thresholds, edited by Victoria Blud, Diane Heath, and Einat Klafter (University of London Press, 01.03.2019), published by OAPEN under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
