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Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in ‘The Pore Caitif’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

M. Teresa Brady
M. Teresa Brady*
Affiliation:
College of White Plains of Pace University
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Extract

The anonymous compiler of the fourteenth-century Middle English treatise known as The Pore Caitif made extensive use of three works of Richard Rolle. His borrowings are from Emendatio vitae, The Form of Living, and The Commentary on the Canticles, and appear in eight tracts of a special group of ten pieces he calls ‘summe short sentencis exciting men to heuenli desiir’ (fol. 1v). Passages from Rolle's Form of Living were used in PC, ‘Desiir of Ihesu,’ ‘Of Mekenes,’ and ‘Of Actif Liif and Comtemplatif Liif.’ Sections from Emendatio vitae appear in PC, ‘Of Vertuous Pacience,’ ‘ϸe Councel of Christ,’ ‘Of Temptacioun,’ and ‘Desiir of Ihesu.’ A brief section of Rolle's Commentary on the Canticles is the source of the entire PC tract ‘ϸe Name of Ihesu,’ as Hope Emily Allen suggested in her monumental study of Rolle. A portion of this same source served for the first half of PC, ‘Of Mannes Wille,’ as Michael G. Sargent recently pointed out. The purpose of the present article is to suggest that the compiler of The Pore Caitif was indebted to Rolle not only for specific passages, but for the very schema and arrangement of his ten tracts of short sentences. It is my belief that Rolle's Emendatio vitae and The Form of Living, the two works of which the PC compiler made the most substantive use, were the governing influence on the order and arrangement of the ten short sentences.

Type
Miscellany
Information
Traditio , Volume 39 , 1983 , pp. 456 - 465
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 A complete edition of the text is available: Sister Mary Teresa Brady, ‘The Pore Caitif: Edited from MS Harley 2336 with Introduction and Notes’ (diss., Fordham 1954). All quotations are from this edition, hereafter cited PC. For a general introduction to the PC, see my article ‘The Pore Caitif: An Introductory Study,’ Traditio 10 (1954) 529–48. Additional studies may be found in ‘The Apostles and the Creed in Manuscripts of The Pore Caitif,’ Speculum 32 (1957) 323–25, and in the articles cited below in notes 2 and 3.Google Scholar

2 See my article ‘Rolle's Form of Living and The Pore Caitif,’ Traditio 36 (1980) 327–38.Google Scholar

3 In my article ‘e Seynt and His Boke: Rolle's Emendatio vitae and The Pore Caitif,’ 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter 7 (1981) 20–31.Google Scholar

4 Emily Allen, Hope, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole, and Materials for His Biography (Oxford 1931) 63, 68, 315, 406.Google Scholar

5 Sargent, Michael G., ‘A Source of The Pore Caitif Tract “Of Man's Will,”’ Mediaeval Studies 41 (1979) 535–39.Google Scholar

6 Quotations are from the edition ‘De emendatione peccatoris’ in Maxima bibliotheca veterum patrum et antiquorum scriptorum ecclesiasticorum, ed. Marguerin de la Bigne (Lyon 1677–1707) XXVI 609–19. Hereafter cited EV.Google Scholar

7 The scribe of MS Worcester Cath. F 172, edited by Henry, William Hulme in Western Reserve University Bulletin n.s. 21 no. 4 (1918) 29.Google Scholar

8 Quotations are from the edition in Emily Allen, Hope, English Writings of Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole (Oxford 1931) 82–119. Hereafter cited Form.Google Scholar

9 Mary Caroline Spalding, The Middle English Charters of Christ (Bryn Mawr College Monographs 15; Bryn Mawr 1914) xlix and 99.Google Scholar

10 Horstman, C., in Yorkshire Writers (London and New York 1895) II 420–36, printed a longer ‘Treatise of Ghostly Batayle’ that includes a fable of the barnake and the tract usually known as ‘The Three Arrows of Doomsday.’ Horstman suggested his treatise borrowed from The Pore Caitif, ‘The Three Arrows,’ and other sources (p. 420). H. E. Allen thought the PC may have borrowed from the ‘Treatise of Ghostly Batayle.’ See Writings Ascribed 424–25.Google Scholar

11 Chapter 1 of E V advises the penitent to take ghostly armor to withstand the devil and his suggestions (p. 610). Chapter 6 repeats this advice: when temptations arise, take up ghostly armor and go to battle (p. 613).Google Scholar

12 The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Deanesly, Margaret (Manchester 1915) 190.Google Scholar

13 English Writings 81ff.Google Scholar

14 Incendium amoris ch. 26, 27.Google Scholar

15 Sargent, ‘A Source’ 535–39.Google Scholar

16 The metaphor of the ladder is very common in medieval spiritual writings, and is often associated with Jacob's ladder described in Gen. 28.12–13. In chapter 7 of his Rule, St. Benedict urged his brethren to climb up the ladder of humility and discretion to heaven. (The Rule of St. Benedict, ed. Justin McCann [London 1952] 39.) John Climacus enumerated thirty gradations in his ‘Scala paradisi,’ PG 88.585–1164. Honorius of Autun in ‘Scala coeli major’ plotted the way to know God through creatures, PL 172.1229–42. His ‘Scala coeli minor’ has fifteen rungs of virtues that lead to charity: PL 172.1239–42. Jan Van Ruysbroeck used the ladder metaphor in The Seven Steps of the Ladder of Spiritual Love, trans. Sherwood Taylor, F. (Westminster 1943). A Middle English translation of ‘Scala claustralium’ by Guigo II, ninth prior of Grande Chartreuse, known as ‘A Ladder of Foure Rongis,’ has an injunction similar to that in PC: man should climb the ladder ‘steyer to steyer and from vertue to vertue evere tyl he se God of Goddys in Syon.’ See ‘A Ladder of Foure Ronges’ in Deonise Hid Diuinite, ed. Phyllis Hodgson (EETS 231; London 1955) 100–17.Google Scholar

17 For example, in the tract ‘Of Temptacioun’ he omits the reference to hermits and anchorites; in ‘Of Mekenes’ he omits the clause ‘if any man or woman gyf am enterely to Goddes servyes and entermetes am of nane erthly bisynes’ from the passage on the seven experiments. In both cases, he has used the material before and after the passages in question, so the omission seems deliberate. The situation here parallels that pointed out by Norman Blake, F. in ‘The Form of Living in Prose and Poetry,’ Archiv 211 (1974) 300–8, where he notes that a poetic version of portions of Rolle's Form of Living omits references to the solitary life in an attempt to make the work more suitable to a general audience (p. 301). However, Blake indicates further that the poem focuses on sin and conversion and entirely omits the materials of chapters 7 to 12 of The Form on love, the contemplative life, and mystical devotion and practice. This is not the case in The Pore Caitıf, for as I have demonstrated these are the very chapters from which the compiler includes materials. He seems genuinely concerned to offer insights on contemplation and myticism to an audience other than solitaries or religious.Google Scholar

18 Lambeth Constitutions of 1281 in Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London 1737) II 51ff.Google Scholar

19 I wish to express thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a summer stipend which enabled me to complete the research for the present article.Google Scholar