Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface Bella Millett
- Bibliography of Bella Millett’s Writings
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Vae Soli’: Solitaries and Pastoral Care
- 2 Scribal Connections in Late Anglo-Saxon England
- 3 Gerald of Wales, the Gemma Ecclesiastica and Pastoral Care
- 4 Time to Read: Pastoral Care, Vernacular Access and the Case of Angier of St Frideswide
- 5 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487: Some Problems of Early Thirteenth-century Textual Transmission
- 6 Pastoral Texts and Traditions: The Anonymous Speculum Iuniorum (c. 1250)
- 7 Reading Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum as Pastoral Literature
- 8 Middle English Versions and Audiences of Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum Religiosorum
- 9 Terror and Pastoral Care in Handlyng Synne
- 10 Prophecy, Complaint and Pastoral Care in the Fifteenth Century Thomas Gascoigne’s Liber Veritatum
- 11 Pastoral Concerns in the Middle English Adaptation of Bonaventure’s Lignum Vitae
- 12 Prayer, Meditation and Women Readers in Late Medieval England: Teaching and Sharing Through Books
- 13 ‘Take a Book and Read’: Advice for Religious Women
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface Bella Millett
- Bibliography of Bella Millett’s Writings
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 ‘Vae Soli’: Solitaries and Pastoral Care
- 2 Scribal Connections in Late Anglo-Saxon England
- 3 Gerald of Wales, the Gemma Ecclesiastica and Pastoral Care
- 4 Time to Read: Pastoral Care, Vernacular Access and the Case of Angier of St Frideswide
- 5 Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487: Some Problems of Early Thirteenth-century Textual Transmission
- 6 Pastoral Texts and Traditions: The Anonymous Speculum Iuniorum (c. 1250)
- 7 Reading Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum as Pastoral Literature
- 8 Middle English Versions and Audiences of Edmund of Abingdon’s Speculum Religiosorum
- 9 Terror and Pastoral Care in Handlyng Synne
- 10 Prophecy, Complaint and Pastoral Care in the Fifteenth Century Thomas Gascoigne’s Liber Veritatum
- 11 Pastoral Concerns in the Middle English Adaptation of Bonaventure’s Lignum Vitae
- 12 Prayer, Meditation and Women Readers in Late Medieval England: Teaching and Sharing Through Books
- 13 ‘Take a Book and Read’: Advice for Religious Women
- Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Summary
Bella Millett is best known for her work on the early thirteenth-century English guide for anchoresses, Ancrene Wisse, culminating in her recently published Corrected Edition of the Text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 402 with Variants from Other Manuscripts. The very title suggests Millett’s approach: magisterial, thorough and correct, yet acknowledging variations; never boastful but always respectful of her material; never assuming knowledge in her readers, but never patronizing. The precision and clarity Millett brings to her editing are also the hallmarks of her writing – which has a wider range than the early thirteenth century English works she is normally associated with. Her essay on the Green Man, for example, is a fine example of her analytic thinking and lucid writing. She has written about the practice of editing and on the use of computers and the internet for teaching and presenting: her home page includes a list of electronic publications.
In her writing on Ancrene Wisse and other associated works Millett has suggested new ways of reading Ancrene Wisse, including as a work of vernacular literature aimed primarily at women and as a precursor to the Books of Hours popular in the later Middle Ages. Importantly, she challenged the received wisdom of her quondam supervisor, Eric Dobson, asking new questions about the origins of Ancrene Wisse. The questioning of received authority is a recurring theme in this volume: Joseph Goering questions an attribution suggested by Leonard Doyle, and Elaine Traherne’s paper traces the mechanism by which an originally tentative attribution can, by gradual accretion, gain unquestioned authority. It is by going back to original sources – often the manuscripts themselves – that our contributors are able to address new questions, and occasionally come up with new answers. By returning to the manuscripts of the Lambeth Homilies, Ralph Hanna suggests new answers to the questions about the production of pastoral manuscripts – including those of Ancrene Wisse – in the thirteenth century.
The title of this collection of essays – Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral Care – gives a broad scope while retaining a definite focus. The pastoral and devotional literature considered in this collection was all written in, or in some way associated with, England in the Middle Ages. This is a category into which Ancrene Wisse itself would fit.
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- Texts and Traditions of Medieval Pastoral CareEssays in Honour of Bella Millett, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009