Christina of Markyate, St Umilta`, Margaret Kirkeby, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich (original) (raw)

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A CELL OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE: THE PILGRIMAGE WITHIN:

CATHERINE OF SIENA, CHRISTINA OF MARKYATE, ANGELA OF FOLIGNO, UMILTA` OF FAENZA, MARGARET KIRKEBY (MARGARET HESLYNGTON, EMMA STAPLETON), BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN,
CHIARA GAMBACORTA, JULIAN OF NORWICH, FRANCESCA ROMANA, ELIZABETH BARTON

Catherine of Siena || Christina of Markyate || Angela of Foligno || Umilt� of Faenza || Margaret Kirkeby || Margaret Heslyngton || Emma Stapleton || Birgitta of Sweden || Chiara Gambacorta || Julian of Norwich || Francesca Romana || Elizabeth Barton

A Cell of Self-Knowledge:St Catherine of Siena

****he young Catherine of Siena immured herself in her room in prayer - and later wrote or rather, dictated, of that time as her 'Cell of Self-Knowledge'. The Middle English Orcherd of Syon translating her Revelation, her _Dialogo,_states that such a soul

abideth in her inward beholdinge to know herself, to that entent only that sche myght better knowe in herself the goodnes of God. /||PHere begynneth the boke of dyuyne doctryne. That is to/ saye of goddes techyng. Gyuen by the person of god the fa/der to the intelleccyoun of the gloryous vyrgyne seynt Kathe-/ryn of Seene/ of the ordre of seynt Domynycke. Which was/ wryte n as she endyted i_n her moder tongue. Wha_n she was in co _n/te_m_placyon & rapt of spyryte she herynge actualy. And i n the same/ tyme she tolde before many what our lorde god spake i_n her.

And here foloweth the fyrst/ chapytre of this boke. Which/ is how the soule of this mayde/ was oned to god & how then she/ made .iiii. petycyons to oure/ lorde in that tyme of contem/placyon and of the answere/ of god and of moche other do/ctryne: as it is specyfyed in the/ kalender before. Capt.1.

Asoule that is reysed up/ with heuenly and/ ghostly desyers & af-/feccyo _n_s to the worshyp/ of god & to the helthe/ of mannes soules with a greate . . .

________

The Orcherd of Syon (Westminster: Wynken de Worde, 1519), Catherine of Siena's Dialogo in Middle English, its colophon: 'a ryghte worshypfull and deuoute gentylman mayster Rycharde Sutton esquyer stewarde of the holy monastery of Syon fyndynge this ghostely tresure these dyologes and reuelacions . . . of seynt Katheryne of Sene in a corner by itselfe wyllynge of his greate charyte it sholde come to lyghte that many relygyous and deuoute soules myght be releued and haue comforte therby he hathe caused at his greate coste this booke to be prynted'./

This essay will discuss women and their cells, of the knowing of self and of God, in England and in Italy, though recognizing also that Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle is part of this genre. /The Cell of Self-Knowlege: Seven Early English Mystical Writers printed by Henry Pepwell, MDXXI. Ed. Edmund G. Gardner. London: Chatto & Windus, 1910. Contents: 1. 'Benjamin', Richard of St Victor. 2. 'Divers Doctrines & Fruitful taken out of the Life of that glorious Virgin & Spouse of our Lord, Saint Katerine of Siene'. 3. Margery Kempe, Ankress of Lynn. 4. A Devout Treatise compiled by Walter Hylton of the 'Song of Angels'. 5. A Devout Treatise called the 'Epistle of Prayer'. 6. A very necessary 'Epistle of Discretion in Stirryngs of the Soul'. 7. A Devout 'Treatise of Discerning of Spirits' very necessary for Ghostly Livers. Interestingly, Edmund Gardner considers the recipient of 'Epistle of Discretion in Stirryng of Spirits' to be a woman about to be an anchoress, pp. 95-110./ I. Christina of Markyate (+1156?)

A manuscript now in the British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius E.1, its edges charred in the Cotton Library fire in 1731, tells us in Latin the story of a remarkable young woman of the twelfth century, Theodora, who came to be named Christina, Anchoress, then Prioress, of Markyate.

/C.H. Talbot, The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth-Century Recluse , citing, p. 17, biographies of Godric of Finchale, Wulfric of Haselbury, Goscelin's Liber Confortatorius, Aelred's De Institutione Inclusarum for practice and theory of reclusion in this period; Christopher J. Holdsworth, 'Christina of Markyate,' Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 185-204; The Life of Christina of Markyate: A Twelfth Century Recluse, ed. and trrans., C.H. Talbot (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997; now available from Oxford University Press)./ The account breaks off in the year 1142, but we know she was still living, 1155-6. The very fine St Albans Psalter, together with the Vita St Alexis, is also associated with Christina of Markyate, making its way sometime after the Dissolution of the Monasteries to the English Benedictine monks at Lambspring (whose Abbot was to fund the publication of the first edition of Julian of Norwich's Revelations), following that, to St Godeharskirche at Hildesheim. /Michael Camille, 'Philological Iconoclasm: Edition and Image in the Vie de Saint Alexis', Medievalism and the Modernist Temper, ed. R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), pp. 371-401/ http://www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/ has digitalised for the web the entire manuscript./ Christina had made her Vow of Virginity as a child at St Albans and preserved that Vow with the famous reading of the story of St Cecilia's wedding on her own wedding night. Her Latin Vita retells the tales of St Cecilia, St Alexis and St Mary of Egypt, giving them a local habitation and a name, reliving the Thebaid in England. Following family and ecclesial abuse Christina fled to the inner cell of the hermit monk of St Albans, Roger. Roger was under obedience to the Abbot, though living where three angels led him from Windsor, on his return from Jerusalem, to Markyate, on the right of Watling Road from St Albans Abbey towards Dunstable, the Latin text very precisely tells us, - peopling England with angels. Likewise the Latin text presents its protagonists, Christina and Roger, forever speaking lines out of the Holy Book, lines from the liturgical psalms. Indeed it is the lines from psalms recited by Christina that dispel evil toads, who are devils, from her cell.

She tells Roger of her vision of Christ giving her his Cross to hold and Roger speaks amidst the Latin in Old English:

letare mecum, myn sunendaege dohter

/Pp. 106-107/.

Soon after Burthred, her husband, arrives, releasing her from her Marriage Vows, and Roger decides to leave her his hermitage.

That decision is preceded by a vision, one that looks back to Gregory's Dialogues on Benedict and forward to Julian of Norwich and Catherine of Siena. In the Dialogue following that concerning Scholastica and Benedict in loving discourse upon heavenly matters all night, Benedict is seen one night in prayer, and at the same instant the whole world to shrink as into one beam of light. Here Christina sees the Queen of Heaven and all the angels.

And falling downwards to the ground, she saw in one flash the whole wide world.

/ Pp. 110-111/.

But above all else she turned her eyes towards Roger's cell and chapel and she said 'I wish to have that place to dwell in'. From having been a willing prisoner in a cramped narrow cell, seated on stone, in silence and in illness / Pp. 102-105/, Christina now becomes officially its anchoress and soon prioress with a growing Benedictine community of nuns about her, closely associated with the Benedictine Abbey of St Albans, and advising its Abbot, Geoffrey. Their relationship is compared to that of Jerome and Paula/ Pp. 172-173/ . Her years of solitude, trial, temptation and illness had brought her wisdom, concerning herself and God. /Centuries later the actual first Abbess of Syon, founded from St Birgitta's Abbey of Vadstena, would be one Joan North, reclusionem moniales de Markyate, replacing the titular one, Matilda Newton, monialis de Barking, while the titular Confessor General, William Alnwick, Benedictine of St Albans and Recluse of Westminster, is replaced by Thomas Fishbourn, likewise a St Albans' Benedictine, and indeed also one of its Recluses, its Hermits: Margaret Deanesly, The Incendium Amoris of Richard Rolle of Hampole, p. 114. The Brigittine manuscripts, including those of Julian of Norwich, were either destroyed or taken into exile, next coming into the hands of the exiled English Benedictines, like the St Albans Psalter at Lambspring. England's Brigittine Syon Abbey from its foundation in the early fifteenth century knew the story of twelfth-century Christina of Markyate, its Abbess's original Mother Foundress. Likewise did the English Congregation of Benedictines in exile on the Continent. At Benedictine Cambrai, which became Stanbrook Abbey, Father Augustine Baker encouraged the Benedictine nuns in their reading and copying such medieval contemplative texts acquired from his former employee, Sir Robert Cotton. Baker's successor, Father Serenus Cressy, Chaplain to the Benedictine daughter house in Paris, now St Mary's Abbey, Colwich, arranged that the Abbot of Lambspring pay for the printing of the editio princeps of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love./ For Christina of Markyate's St Albans Psalter with its Vie de St Alexis, searching Google to find the Aberdeen website which completely replicates the exquisite manuscript: www.abdn.ac.uk/stalbanspsalter/�

II. Angela of Foligno (+1309)

ngela of Foligno, a Franciscan tertiary, who did not really choose to live in a physical cloister or a physical cell, spoke of the fruits of contemplation as being where one's soul becomes a room, a cell, in which one finds the All Good, finds the entire Creation. This account, written down at her dictation by Fra Arnaldo, her confessor and spiritual director, often clandestinely, gives: ' anima mea est una camera . . . est ibi . . . omne bonum'.

/Et quamvis ego possim recipere tristitias et laetitias exterius aliqualiter et parum, tamen intus in anima mea est una camera in qua non ingreditur aliqua laetitia nec tristitia nec delectatio alicuius omnino virtutis nec delectatio alicuius rei quae nominari possit, sed est ibi illud omne bonum quod non est aliud bonum, vel illud ita omne bonum quod non est aliud bonum. Et in illo manifestare Dei, quamvis ego blasphemem dicendo et male dicendo illud quia non possum illud loqui, dico tamen quod in illo manifestare Dei est tota veritas; et in illo manifestare Dei intelligo habeo totam veritatem quae est in caelo et in inferno et in toto mundo et in omni loco et in omni re, et totum delectamentum quod est in caelo et in omni creatura, cum tanta veritate et certitudine, quod nullo modo possem credere aliud toti mundo. Sed si totus mundus diceret aliud, ego facerem inde truffas. Et video illum qui est esse et quomodo est esse omnium creatorum. Et video quomodo me fecit capacem ad intelligendum praedicta modo melius quam fueram hactenus, quando videbam eum in illa tenebra quae me tantum consuevit delectare. Et video me solam cum Deo, totam mundam, totam sanctificatam, totam veram, totam recta, totam certificatam et totam caelestem in eo. Et quando sum in isto, non recordor alterius rei.

Et aliquando dum eram in praedictis dixit mihi Deus: Filia divinae sapientiae, templum Dilecti, delectum Dilecti. Et: Filia pacis, in te pausat tota Trinitas, tota veritas, ita quod tu tenes me et ego teneo te. Et una operationum animae est, quod intelligo cum magna capacitate et cum magno delectamento quomodo Deus venit in Sacramento altaris cum illa societate (IX: p. 215)/.

She also speaks of this state of welcoming Christ in the Eucharist within the soul with his heavenly host as being both 'thrones' and 'cities', concepts Julian repeats in her own writing, in the First, Long and Short Texts, and in reported discourse in Margery's writing, the Oral Text. Angela will even, in the Instructions, use the same image as had Christina of Markyate, of Christ as Pilgrim, coming to one's soul, one cell of self knowledge. /Et in praedicto die habui tam nobilem elevationem et tam claram intelligentiam quomodo Christus venit in Sacramento altaris, quod nunquam nec prius nec postea fuit mihi tam clare demonstratum. Et fuit mihi demonstratum quomodo Christus veniebat cum illa societate. Et poteram delectari in Christo et in illa societate, quod non est mihi consuetum quod possim delectari nisi in Christo, unde mirata fui quomodo poteram delectari in eo et in societate. Et aliter intelligebam eum, et aliter intelligebam societatem illam, et delectabar in eo et in societate. Et fuit mihi dictum quod illa societas erat throni. Et ego non intelligebam quid esset dicere "throni". Et erat illa societas una sclera vel una acies tantae multitudinis, quod, nisi esset quod ego intelligo quod Deus facit omnia cum mensura, crederem quod illa societas esset numerus sine mensura, id est innumerabilis. Et fuit ibi locutio divina dicens: Animae sunt in quas venio, et transeo. Et dixit quod non erat anima in magno numero civitatum, in qua pausem sicut pauso in anima tua. Et dixit numerum civitatum, sed non recordor eius.

Et ego frater scriptor quaesivi ab ea si illa acies, postquam acies erat, si habebat aliquid mensurae in longitudine aliqua vel in latitudine aliquo modo. Et ipsa respondit quod non habebat aliquam mensuram in longitudine vel latitudine, sed erat ineffabiliter. (IX: p. 211)./

Yet in her Instructions she also claims that she hypocritically enclosed herself in her room in Lent to impress people and win esteem, and that in her cell and her soul the devil lurked. Though following that introduction, not merely of humility, but humiliation, not merely of contempt but vituperation, she then speaks of truth and wisdom seated in her soul, a passage Julian of Norwich will echo: /Sed postquam anima perfecte unitur Deo et ponitur in sede veritatis, quae veritas est sedes animae, non clamat nec conqueritur de Deo nec tenerescit nec infirmatur, immo cognoscit se indignam omni bono et omni dono Dei et dignam maiori inferno quam sit ille qui factus est. Et ponitur in ea una sapientia et una maturitas, et fit stabilis et ordinata et adeo fortificata quod iret ad mortem; et habet Deum in plenitudine quantum capere potest, et Deus etiam ipsam crescere facit ut fiat capax eius quod vult ponere in ea; et videt illum qui est, et videt quod omnia nihil sunt nisi in quantum habent esse ab illo qui est; et habet omnia quae praecesserunt pro nihilo comparative et etiam omnia creata; nec curat de morte nec infirmitate, honore vel vituperio. Et ita pacificatur et quietatur quod nihil appetit et perdit desideria, nec potest operari quia est victa; et ita videt in illo lumine Deum omnia ita debite et ordinate facere, quod etiam de eius absentia non infirmatur; et ita fit conformis voluntati eius quod eum absentem non requirit, sed de omnibus quae facit contentatur et totum ei committit. (Instructions II: p. 223)./ And then in Instruction XIV, she writes to her Franciscan disciples that ' There are only two things in the world that I find pleasure in speaking about, namely, knowledge of God and self, and remaining continually in one's cell. . . . I believe that anyone who does not know how to stay put and remain in a cell ought not to go anywhere.' /Non miremini, filii mei carissimi, si non rescripsi vobis ad plures litteras quas mihi misistis, quia taliter sum ligata quod nec vobis nec aliis litteras mittere possum nec dicere verba spiritualia nisi haec communia. Et in toto mundo non delectat me aliquid dicere nisi solum haec duo, scilicet cognoscere Deum et seipsum, hoc est iacere continue in carcere suo et nunquam de suo carcere exire. Et si de suo carcere exit, cum dolore et cum vera contritione conetur redire ad carcerem suum. Credo quod qui nescit iacere et stare in carcere suo, non vadat et non habet bonum quaerere alienum et non rimetur desuper se. (Instruction XIV: p. 267)/ In Instruction XXIX, the material crescendoes with an entire Chapter on the Knowledge of God and Oneself, exactly as in Julian's texts: /DE COGNITIONE DEI ET SUI IPSIUS

(Oportet quod homo cognoscat)

Iterum cum quaereretur ab ea quare oportet haberi paupertatem, dolorem et despectum, respondit: Oportet quod homo cognoscat Deum et seipsum.

Cognitio Dei praesupponit cognitionem sui hoc modo, ut videlicet homo consideret et videat quem offendit; postea consideret et videat quis est ipse qui offendit. Ex qua secunda consideratione et visione datur gratia super gratiam, visio super visionem, lumen super lumen.

Ex his incipit devenire ad cognitionem Dei. Et quanto amplius cognoscit, tanto amplius diligit; et quanto amplius diligit, tanto plus desiderat; et quanto plus desiderat, tanto fortius operatur. Et ista operatio est signum et mensura amoris; quia in hoc cognoscitur si amor est purus et verus et rectus, si homo diligit et operatur quod dilexit et operatus est ille quem diligit.

Sed Christus, quem diligit, habuit, dilexit et operatus est illa tria donec vixit; ergo qui eum diligit, debet eadam semper diligere, operari et habere sicut Christus ea habuit, ut habetur supra./

Finally, the Franciscans preparing her Book of Angela of Foligno following her death conclude with noting that the apostles, who preached Christ's life, learned from a woman that he was raised from the dead to life, and that St Jerome had cited the Prophetess Huldah, to whom crowds ran, that the gift of prophecy had been transmitted to the female sex to shame men who are doctors of the Law but who transgress God's commandments. /Recordemini, carissimi, quod Christi primo passibilem vitam apostoli praedicantes, eam post mortem resuscitatam a femina didicerunt. . . . Quia et beatus Hieronymus dicit de Olda prophetissa ad quam concurrebat populus, quia in opprobrium virorum et doctorum legis, qui erant transgressores mandati, est ad femineum sexum prophetia translata. Deo gratias semper. Amen./ Mechtild of Magdebourg's Flowing Light of the Godhead was similarly defended by Dominican Heinrich von Halle writing of Deborah's practice of solitary contemplation from which to prophesy to the people of Israel and of Huldah's prophecy to the king Josias.

Perhaps Franciscan Angela of Foligno helped shaped Dominican Catherine of Siena's and Benedictine Julian of Norwich's concept of a 'Cell of Self-Knowledge'. Certainly the English Benedictine nuns in exile at Cambrai and Paris were copying out her text as well as Julian's. A small manuscript by them, Biblioth�que Mazarine 1202, titled 'Colections', finished 23 July 1724, on pages 21-22, gives:

Blessed Angela of Foligno

n a certain time while I pray'd in my Cell, these words were sayd
unto me interiorly by God.

And a manuscript at the Bodleian Library, Laud 46, at folios 70 verso and 72 recto, brings together excerpts from Marguerite Porete's Liber speculum animarum simplicium, her Mirror of Simple Souls, and the Libellus de vita et doctrina Angelae de Fulgineo , The Book of Angela of Foligno. See http://www.sismelfirenze.it/mistica/ita/TestiStrumenti/fullTextAngela.htm

III. Umilta` of Faenza (+1310)

e know a great deal, through historical documents, through paintings, through sculpture, about Beata Umilt�, Blessed Humility, of Faenza, who was in turn a wife, mother, nun, anchoress and abbess, who died in Florence in 1310.

Rosanesa Negusanti was born in Faenza to noble parents named Elimonte and Richilda in 1226. At fifteen she was married to Ugolotto Caccianemici, bearing him two sons who both died following their baptisms. She begged her husband to make a reciprocal vow of chastity. At first he drowned his sorrows in fun, then fell ill and consented, becoming himself a monk, while she became a nun, both of the double Monastery of St Perpetua, in 1250. Rosanesa thus went from freedom to unconditional obedience, from an abundance of wealth to monastic poverty, from marriage to total consecration to God. She mortified herself by taking on the most humble and servile jobs. The other Sisters thought this was a passing phase but the Prior of the two monasteries understood her virtue and named her anew as 'Humility', Umilt�.

Rosanesa persuades her husband Ugolotto to their vows of chastity

The nuns would eat in silence, one of their number reading to them from a book. Umilt�, though from a rich and noble family, was illiterate. One day, in fun, the other Sisters asked her to read. She obeyed humbly and from her mouth came words of the highest things, yet none of which were to be found written in the book from which she supposedly read. What she said was,

Do not despise the work of God, which is always true and just, though it is hard. In heaven shall be raised what is always humble. Was she inspired? She was taught, humbly, to read and to write in Latin by her sisters, and her Sermons testify to the richness of her mind. It is said that when she dictated her sermons, the whitest of doves, with golden feet and beak, would appear at her ears, and that when it rained while she dictated, her shoulder remained dry.

Umilt�'s inspired reading in the refectory, Faenza

Umilt� became ill with cancer of the kidneys, causing a nauseous smell from her rotting flesh. She begged God that, if it were his will, he would not inflict such disturbance upon the nursing Sisters. Immediately the Infirmarian Sister saw that the wound had healed. In her four years at St Perpetua she gained esteem and admiration. She felt the need for more isolation, for the life of a hermit. In the night a mysterious voice whispered,

'Soror Humilitas, surge; meque sequere,' 'Rise up, Sister Umilt�, and follow me'. She did not ask 'Who are you? Where are you taking me?' Instead, quickly, she made the sign of the cross and dressed for travel, taking her Office book and leaving it on the high wall of the monastery, where it was found the next day in evidence of this impossible and mysterious flight. The doors had remained locked all night. Yet Umilt�, crossing the river Lamone, had remained dry.

Umilt� leaves her convent

She came to the island of St Martin where the Clarissan Sister Philippa, a wise and severe woman, opened the door to her and gave her shelter for the night. In the morning the Prior and her uncle Niccolo learned about the locked door and the Psalter left on the wall. They gave permission for Umilt� to live in a secret and sealed room. Prayer and penance, bread and water, and bitter herbs, were to be her life

ut Christum pauperem sequatur paupercula. The city spoke of her as a saint.

A Vallombrosan monk of Saint Apollinare was about to have his feet amputated, but desired instead to be brought to Umilt�. She signed his feet with the sign of the cross and he was healed. The Vallombrosans built her a cell next to the church of St Apollinarius, into which she was sealed, and which had a small window looking onto the church through which she could see and receive the Sacrament,

qua videre posset et recipere sacrosanctae Matris Ecclesiae Sacramenta and another looking onto the street, through which she could receive food and give counsel. One day a ferret came to join her, keeping her company. Her husband, hearing that she had become Vallombrosan, himself became a monk of that order, then died.

Umilt�'s little cell attracted a great company, other young women wishing to imitate her, such that the cells multiplied like those in a beehive and the prayers and psalms could be heard in unity ascending into heaven. We are reminded of the growth of Christina's Priory at Markyate. But the Abbot of Vallombrosa now decided that women could join the Order, and that Umilt� should be their Abbess. Umilt�'s pet ferret fled at the news. Umilt� cried at being unsealed from her cell, but obeyed her Abbot, following twelve years of self-imposed imprisonment, stepping out again into the world. In 1266 she was made Abbess of the first Vallombrosan convent for nuns. She was stern with both nuns and priests, insisting that they confess their faults before their deaths or before celebrating Mass, for the sake of their souls. One day the cellarer was given a fish to prepare and, thinking it was only enough for the Abbess, served it to her in a delicious sauce. Umilt� flung it into the midst of the refectory floor. The cellarer retrieved it and found it was miraculously large enough to serve all the Sisters.

Fifteen years later, in 1281, Faenza was torn apart by the strife between Guelf and Ghibelline and Umilt�'s convent was sacked, though she and her Sisters were respected by the soldiers, because of her sanctity. It was time to leave. At first it was planned to move to Venice. But Umilt� was inspired by St John the Evangelist instead to go to Florence, even though in 1258 the Guelfs there had decapitated the Abbot Tesoro of Vallombrosa. She chose to go to make peace between the warring factions. She arrived in the midst of the Peace of the Cardinal Latino, when Guelf and Ghibelline kissed and made up for their bitter bloodshed. In that year Dante Alighieri was seventeen and writing his early sonnets.

Umilt� building her convent, Florence

Umilt� herself gathered the stones, loading them onto a donkey, to begin building her monastery dedicated to St John the Evangelist in Florence. One day, while she was doing so, a nurse brought to her the dead child who was her charge. Umilt� took the boy into a nearby shrine and laid the cadaver at the feet of the image of St John the Evangelist, then with a candle made the sign of the cross over the child, who miraculously opened his eyes. The convent was founded in 1282. Umilt� wanted that convent to be simple and poor. The Florentine authorities decided otherwise and it was constructed according to the design of Giovanni, son of Niccolo Pisano, and consecrated in 1297, amidst the building of Santa Croce, begun, 1295, Santa Maria del Fiore, begun 1296, and the Palazzo della Signoria, begun 1298.

Umilt� resurrecting the dead child

Umilt� became extremely ill with a fever one August and implored her Sisters for ice, telling them to go to the well to fetch it. They found the dry well full of ice. Their obedience had taught them charity. The well today is in the Fortezza da Basso. Another time, when she was too tired to go further on foot in the Appenines a horseman took her up onto his gentle horse, comforting her almost more by his heavenly words. Another time she and her Sisters on such a journey found they could not eat the brown bread given them, when suddenly there appeared the whitest of bread for them to eat. Two women hermits had almost decided to give up their solitude, when they dreamed of Umilt�, who then visited them in reality, and whom they recognised. A knight living near Santa Felicit� in Florence was troubled about his worldly affairs and sought advice from Umilt�. Who told him that that Thursday was to be the last day of his life. Which it turned out to be.

Her Sermons are magnificent. In Sermon II she says it is the divine word which speaks, not coming from her, but from the Father and the highest God, who gives to each as much as he desires. Secretly he has taught her with questions and answers, speaking within her, but now she speaks to us with external words. The Spirit himself had taught her in silence. And she now pronounces aloud to us his divine words which she had heard. Beware therefore that you do not receive this emptily, what her tongue is moved to say, for it is moved by the Spirit. She says in Sermon III that she marvels and fears about these things which rise up within her, which she dares to write and say; for they are not in any book, nor taught to her by any human science; only the Spirit of God speaks within her, opening her mouth with these words which she must say.

And in another Sermon she says,

I go to the Lord, and he orders me to do this work, and then the Spirit of Jesus teaches me. And then and always the King of Creation is with me, who would not wish me to speak in ignorance, but I understand what I see, being fully instructed in what I think. In Sermon VIII, she declares While you, my teacher, are King, most sweet and kind, you speak to me, exhilerating me, and I speak, burning with desire through being loved by Christ. You teach me to speak and to know the truth. With me you are near and make me, your unworthy slave, speak and open my mouth with these words, which are not my own. She also composed Laude to the Virgin which her nuns at San Salvi continued to sing for centuries and which are noted to be full of mysteries, sunt enim plenae mysteriis. In her cell she kept an image of the Child Jesus in swaddling bands, and used it to contemplate upon the Incarnation and Birth of Christ. The image is still preserved by the Vallombrosan Sisters in Bagno a Ripoli. She also spoke of her two guardian angels, one called Sapiel, the wisdom of God (whose name, she tells us, filled her heart suddenly with great joy), the other Emmanuel, God in us. Like Julian, she speaks of a universe in her heart, Habeo immensam gloriam in corde meo, certificata de nobilitate et magnitudine Angelorum moerum: Cum autem cogito de eorum pulchritudine, sentio me abite in ecstasim, ac veluti extra me rapi prae excessu gaudii. She also says, in her II Sermon, O Emmanuel, O Sapiel, qui estis Angeli mei custodes, oro vos, dulcissimi ut ex omnibus viribus vestris praestetis mihi auxilium tam efficax, ut cum deduxeritis me ad praesentiam magnae Reginae, possim contemplare et fui matre cum dilecto filio suo, et de sinu materno inter brachia mea accipere gloriosum istum infantulum. In Sermon IV, she says Suprema Deitas venit ab imperiali caelo in terram, et humiliter intravit vasculum unius puellae . . . . In 1300, the year of the Jubilee, Umilt� was seventy-four years old, and weakened by worry and penance. 13 December, 1309, St Lucy's Day, she had a stroke losing her speech and mobility. Yet her monastery experienced miracles, such as bread and money miraculously multiplying though it was a time of great famine. Umilt� had desired to die on a Friday. And so she did, on three o'clock, on Friday, 22 May, 1310. All Florence was moved at the news and came flocking. The Bishop of Florence, Antonio degli Orsi, presided at the funeral on Sunday, 24 May.

Umilt�'s Funeral, Florence

She was buried in a tomb at the right of the altar dedicated to St John the Evangelist. A Vallombrosan monk was healed of a crippled arm that had prevented him from celebrating Mass. A woman who for five years had been tormented with an illness that prevented her from speaking or swallowing was healed. Another woman with a stomach tumor was likewise healed. The tomb was observed to be covered with oil, and though it was cleaned, continued that way, the monks raising the slab and finding the body of the saint incorrupt. This was checked again, 11 June, 1311, by Antonio degli Orsi, Bishop of Florence (whose own tomb, by Tino da Camaino, is in the Duomo) and other witnesses.

Pietro Lorenzetti, after 1313, painted these scenes of the life of the saint, showing her at its centre in her habit and veil, all of which is surmounted by the 'vile' sheepskin cap she was known to wear in her lifetime, and where she is shown holding forth her book and her flail, Orcagna similarly sculpting her so. Lorenzetti's polyptych is now partly in the Uffizi, partly in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin. Orcagna's statue is now in the baptistry of the church of San Michele at San Salvi. Santa Umilt�'s large body now rests at Bagno a Ripoli. 1 March, 1721, she was declared 'Beata Umilt�', 4 March 1948, Saint Humility. In 1534, the Medicis had the convent move to San Salvi, near the Campo di Marte. Later still, in 1815, the authorities suppressed that convent, the Sisters taking refuge finally, in 1972, with the body of their Saint in Bagno a Ripoli, whom I have seen there.

Orcagna, La Beata Umilt�

IV. Margaret Kirkeby (+1405?), Margaret Heslyngton (+ after 1435), Emma Stapleton (+1442)

et us return to women contemplatives in England. It is possible to trace several in connection with Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love. The earliest surviving manuscript of that text, the British Library's Amherst Manuscript, is a florilegium compiled by a male Carthusian for a female anchorite, by Richard Misyn for Margaret Heslyngton. The manuscript opens with his translations from Latin into English of the Yorkshire Hermit Richard Rolle's texts, De Emendatio Vitae and Incendium Amoris, written for Margaret Kirkeby, a Cistercian nun at Hampole, then an Anchoress at Layton, and for another woman contemplative. The Amherst's colophon to De Emendatio Vitae gives

Thus: Endis the xij Cheptyrs
Off. Richarde hampolle In to englys
translate be ffrere Rycharde misyn to
in fformation Off Crystyn saules Anno
domini millesimo CCCCmo xxxiiij Followed by the preface to the Incendium Amoris, its subsequent colophon dating it 1435, At the reuerence Off Oure lorde Jhu
criste: To the askynge of thy de=
syre Sistyr Margarete Couety=
nge a Sethe to make ffor encrese. [Fols. 8-8v] We need to go backwards in time from 1435 to around 1439, from these later contemplative woman to their predecessor named in this Julian Manuscript, Margaret Kirkeby and her relationship to Richard Rolle. Richard Rolle's Office tells us of his earlier having got his sister to give him two of her kirtles, one grey, one black, and their father's rain hood, from which he improvised his hermit's garb, to her consternation. 'Frater meus insanit', 'My brother's gone mad'

she said.

The Longleat Manuscript of Richard Rolle's writings is titled Tractatus Ricardi heremite ad margaretam Reclusam de kyrkeby de vita contemplativa and has the colophon, Tractatus Ricardi heremite de hampoll ad margaretam Reclusam de Kyrkby de amore dei. Then two further Rolle texts, Ego Dormio, written for a nun of Yedingham, and The Form of Living (A132-135), a text particularly associated with Margaret Kirkeby's enclosure as an anchoress, 12 December 1348, and written shortly before Rolle's death, in 1349, appear later in the Amherst Manuscript than the section which has Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love.

Margaret, of the le Boteler family, had been a Cistercian nun at Hampole, had had a seizure, leaving her unable to speak or move, Rolle helping her by holding her head on his shoulder through the window of the anchorhold during a second attack, and promising she would have no more while he lived. On having a third attack, when a recluse a great distance away, at Layton, she sent a messenger to Hampole who found at those moments, on September 29, 1349, Rolle had died, perhaps of the plague. Later, she returned to be enclosed at Ainderby, near Hampole, eventually moving into Rolle's own cell where she died about 1405.

/At Layton Margaret Kirkeby was close to the Baron Fitzhughs at Ravensworth and to the Scropes of Masham. This is of interest, for the Fitzhughs and the Scropes not only collected Rolle manuscripts; they were also closely involved with the founding of the Brigittine Ayon Abbey in England, Baron Fitzhugh having earlier been at Vadstena for the wedding of the English king's daughter to the Swedish king held in that Abbey church. The Form of Living is to be found amongst manuscripts at Vadstena, now housed at the University of Uppsala. It also appears quoted in sections of the Pore Caitif, which I suspect to have been authored by Julian of Norwich, for it is one of the texts in the Norwich Castle Manuscript , written during Julian's lifetime, and which occurs with the Treatise thought to be by Jerome, but actually by Pelagius, advising the Recluse Demetriade, how best to fulfil her Vow of Chastity./ Let us turn back to this earliest extant version of Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love, the British Library's Amherst Manuscript written out not in Norfolk, but in Lincolnshire, dialect. The first texts in this manuscript, in separate gatherings from the rest, include translations of Richard Rolle's De emendatione vitae , and Incendium amoris, made by the Carmelite Prior Richard Misyn for the Anchoress Margaret Heslyngton in 1434 and 1435, are later than Julian of Norwich's dates. /A18-18v; Richard Misyn became Carmelite Prior of Lincoln, 1435, explaining Lincoln provenance of this manuscript's scribe. Joan Nuth, Wisdom's Daughter: The Theology of Julian of Norwich, p. 9, gives Julian's library as the Chastising of God's Children, The Cloud of Unknowing, Ruusbroec's Treatise of Perfection of the Sons of God, Augustine, William of St Thierry and the Victorines. Joyce Bazire and Eric Colledge, The Chastising of God's Children and the Treatise of the Perfection of the Sons of God, pp. 9-10, noting the library for Chastising includes Suso's Horologium, Ruusbroec's Spiritual Espousal , Birgitta's Revelationes and Alfonso's_Epistola_, pp. 65-68./ It is possible that the Lincolnshire Carmelite Richard Misyn may himself be the scribe of this manuscript, gathering material for it for women anchoresses and from women anchoresses and including there texts by women anchoresses, beguines and nuns, Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete and Birgitta of Sweden, over two decades.His material collected into the Amherst Manuscript may even have come from Julian's own library, called in by William Alnwick, Bishop of Norwich (1426-1436), who then became Bishop of Lincoln (1436-1449), who relentlessly persecuted Lollards, and who was one of Joan of Arc's judges condemning her at Rouen, 24 May 1431. /Richard Misyn, as suffragan bishop and a member of the Corpus Christi Guild of York, is inscribed as granting a forty days' indulgence upon the Scrope Chalice in York Minster (' Beschope Mesin'), venerating the memory of Archbishop Richard le Scrope of York ('Richard Arche Beschope Scrope'), who had been beheaded, 1405, preaching beforehand on the Five Wounds of Christ, it taking three blows of the sword to kill him. Exeter University Library, John Rory Fletcher Notebook 11, Syon Who's Who II, p. 117. Fletcher notes that in 1829 when the tomb was opened the decapitated body of the Archbishop was seen with the separated head placed between the left arm and the body./ This pairing of men and women, as with Richard Misyn, O.Carm., and Margaret Heslyngton, can be seen as well with Adam Hemlyngton, O.Carm., with a doctorate in theology from Oxford, as spiritual director to Dame Emma Stapleton, daughter of Sir Miles Stapleton, enclosed at the Carmelite friary from 1421-1442. /Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England, pp. 213-214. Agnes Stapleton wills a manuscript of Chastising of God's Children, p. 215./ Julian and Dame Emma Stapleton's father would have been acquainted with each other, Sir Miles being the executor of the Countess of Suffolk's Will, bequeathing twenty shillings to Julian, Anchoress in Norwich.

A further such pairing is with Master Alan of Lynn, O.Carm., indicer to Birgitta of Sweden's Revelationes /Oxford, Lincoln College, Lat. 69./, Margery Kempe's great friend and director. She speaks of him as 'A worschepful doctour of dyuynite whych hygth Maysyr Aleyn, a Whyte Frer', that is a Carmelite. So also was William Southfield, O.Carm., a White Friar, a Carmelite, who was visited by Margery in Norwich at the same time she encountered Julian in her Anchorhold there.

/The Book of Margery Kempe , ed. Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen, EETS 212.41 and Appendix VIII./. Although most scholarship on the Amherst Manuscript's florilegium views it through Carthusian spectacles, for it came into the ownership of Carthusian Sheen and Brigittine Syon, it clearly had Carmelite origins and likely was transmitted along the Norfolk/Lincolnshire axis by these Carmelites, and thus is deserving of further study in the context of Norwich and Lincoln White Friars, themselves living in 'cells of self knowledge' in their ministry to enclosed women contemplatives in their 'anchorholds of self knowledge'.

V. Birgitta of Sweden and Chiara Gambacorta

irgitta of Sweden was the mother of eight children, an indefatigable pilgrim, who when left a widow journeyed to Rome for the Jubilee Year of 1300. There she found lodging in a Cardinal's Palace with a window, a hagioscope looking upon the altar of San Lorenzo in Damaso, where she would pray and write. This period of intense anachoritic contemplation prompted her composition of the Sermo Angelicus, the dictation to her of the Offices for the nuns to recite of the Brigittine Order she founded. Later, she was evicted from that palace and moved to that of Francesca Papazuri in the Piazza Farnese.

In Birgitta's seventieth year, when dying, she journeyed to Jerusalem and Bethlehem on pilgrimage, writing every day about her visions, her prophecies. She was accompanied on that pilgrimage by the ruler of Pisa, Pietro Gambacorti, and by Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Ja�n, who had become her spiritual director and the editor of her massive Revelationes . Her models are St Helena and St Jerome's St Paula who similarly journeyed to the Holy Places having visions there.

The Gambacorti had a young daughter, who was friends with Catherine of Siena and who insisted, despite her parents' opposition, on becoming a Dominican nun, taking the name in religion of Chiara. Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Ja�n, who was both Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena's spiritual director, strongly supported Chiara Gambacorta and gave her a copy of the Revelationes. She succeeded in founding a monastery in Pisa, living a contemplative life, and she filled her convent with paintings about St Catherine of Siena and St Birgitta of Sweden. Especially these paintings dwell on the scenes of St Birgitta in the act of contemplation and in contemplative writing. The cells of self knowledge of Saints Catherine and Birgitta become her own. Today, her tiny body, like St Umilta`'s large one at Bagni a Ripoli, lies in a glass coffin beneath the altar of her convent's church in Pisa.

VI. Julian of Norwich

ulian's context, even if only gauged from the manuscripts containing her work, is fairly and squarely in the midst of such contemplative 'cells of self-knowledge'.

Julian in the Westminster Manuscript, which seems to replicate the earliest version of her Showing of Love , states it is

[. . . redyer to vs. and more easy
to comme to �e knowyng of god.
than to knowyng of our owne
soule. ffor oure soule is so depe
grounded in god. and so endeles= /P118
ly tresored: �at we may not
comme to �e knowyng therof.
tyll we haue fyrste knowyng
of god whiche is �e maker.
to whom it is oned. But not
wtstondynge. I sawe �at we
haue kyndely of fulnes to desy=
re wysely. & truely to knowe
oure owne soule. wherby we
are lerned to seke it there it is.
and �at is in god. and �us by
the gracious ledynge of �e holy] is readier to us and more easy to come to the knowing of God than to knowing of our own soul. /Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection , Westminster Cathedral Manuscript, fol. 35v: ' Of the knowledge of our selves and of God [later hand]. It nedyth fro a soule �t wold/Haue knowying of goostly thyng. for to haue first knowyng of it selfe [original hand]'. Augustine, Confessions III.vi.57, 'tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo'; Baldwin of Canterbury, Treatise; Angela of Foligno, ' Ego sum plus intimatus animae tuae, quam anima tua sibimet. I am deeper within your soul than your soul is to itself'; Jan van Ruusbroec, Sparkling Stone, Amherst Manuscript, folios 117-117v, 124v-126, 128v-130./ For our soul is so deep grounded /Ephesians 3.17./ in God and so endlessly treasured that we may not come to the knowing thereof until we have first knowing of God which is the maker to whom it is oned. /Catherine of Siena, Orcherd of Syon, EETS 258.19: 'grounded in �e knowinge of God and of itsilf. & Therfore suche a preier one� a soule to God'./ But, notwithstanding, I saw that we have naturally of fullness to desire wisely and truly to know our own soul, whereby we are taught to seek it where it is, and that is in God, and thus by the gracious leading of the holy [101

gooste. we shulde knowe them.
bothe in oon. whether we be
stered to knowe god. or our selfe
soule. it ar bothe good & trewe.
God is nerer to vs. �an owre
owne soule. for he is grounde
in whom oure soule stondyth.
and he is mene �at kepith �e
substance & �e sensualyte toge=
der, so �at it shall neuer depart.
for oure soule syttith in god. in
verey reste. and oure/ soule stan= /P118v
dith in god in sure strength. &
oure soule is kyndely rooted in
god. in endelesse loue. & �erfore
yf we wyll haue knowynge
of oure soule. & communyng & da=]

Spirit, we should know them both in one. Whether we be guided to know God, or our own soul, both are good and true.

God is nearer to us than our own soul, for he is ground in whom our soul stands, and he is the means that keeps the substance and the sensuality together so that it shall never depart.

/Augustine, Confessions III.vi.57, 'tu autem eras interior intimo meo et superior summo meo'; Angela of Foligno, 'I am deeper within your soul than your soul is to itself'; Jan van Ruusbroec, Sparkling Stone, A117-117v, 124v-126, 128v-130./ For our soul sits in God, in true rest, and our soul stands in God in sure strength, and our soul is naturally rooted in God, in endless love. /Ephesians 3.17./ And therefore if we will have knowing of our soul, and communing and da- [101v

liance �er with: It behouyth
to seke into oure lord god in
whom it is enclosyd. And an= /P118v.10
nentis oure substance it may
ryghtfully be called our soule.
and anentis our sensualite it
may ryghtfull be called ou
soule. and �at is by �e onyng
�at it hath in god. That wu= /A112.15
shypfull cite �at our lord ihesu
syttith in. it is our sensualite.
in whiche he is enclosed. and
our kyndely substance is beclo=
syd in ihesu criste. wt �e blessed
soule of criste syttyng in reste
in �e godhed. And I sawe ful
surely �at it behouyth nedis]

liance /These words and their contexts are echoed in Margery Kempe's vocabulary when she discusses her meeting with Dame Julian, The Book of Margery Kempe, EETS 212.43:18-20: ' Mych was �e holy dalyawns �at �e ankres & �is creatur haddyn be comownyng in �e lofe of owyr Lord Ihesu Crist many days �at �ei were to-gedyr.'/ therewith, it is right to seek into our lord God in whom it is enclosed.

And then our substance may rightfully be called our soul, and then our sensuality may rightfully be called our soul, and that is by the oneing that it has in God. That worshipful city

/Margery Kempe hears this word as 'sit' and so does the Cloud Author write it; see John 1.14, ' Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis ', having it be 'the Word become flesh and dwelt in us', Luke 17.21, Hebrews 11.13-16, 12.28; Body as Temple of the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 3.16-17, 6.19-20. Julian also draws on Augustine, City of God, seeing that city as in the soul, ' interiorly '; Norwich Castle Manuscript, fol. 78v. Compare also, St Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle/ that our lord Jesus sits in, it is our sensuality, in which he is enclosed, and our natural substance is beclosed in Jesus Christ, with the blessed soul of Christ sitting in rest in the Godhead. /Paris, while giving this in the XIV Showing, at XIV.lviii.122v, cross-references it there to the XVI Showing, at XVI.lxviii.143v-146v, and back to it again, XVI.lxxxi.168, the constant cross-referencing in that text perhaps indicating its great importance in Julian's thought. It is still present in Amherst, A112. Julian has distilled the Gospels, 1 Corinthians 3.16-17, 6.15.20, Hebrews, and Augustine into this concept./ And I saw full surely that it is right [102

�at/ we shall be in longynge /P119
and in penance. into �e tyme
�t we be led so depe in to god
�at we may verely & truely
know oure owne soule. And
sothly I saw �at in to thys
high depenes oure lorde hym
selfe ledith vs in �e same loue
�at he made vs. and in �e same
loue �at he bought vs. bi his
mercy & grace �rough vertue
of his blessed passion. And
not wtstondyng all �is we
may neuer comme to the full
knowyng of god. tyll we first
know clerely oure owne soule.
ffor into �e tyme �t it be in the]

that we shall be in longing and in penance, until the time that we be led so deep in to God that we may verily and truly know our own soul. And truly I saw that into this great deepness /Julian's high depenes is the Latin construction, as in Aeneid II.203; see Jan van Ruusbroec, Sparkling Stone, A117v,124v,125,126,127 for the concept, based on Romans 8.39, Ephesians 3.18./ our Lord himself leads us in the same love that he made us, and in the same love that he bought us, by his mercy and grace through virtue of his blessed Passion. And notwithstanding all this we may never come to the full knowing of God, until we first know clearly our own soul. For until the time that it be in the [102v

ffull myghtis we may not be
all full holy.]

full strength we may not be all fully holy.

Julian's editor, who is likely Cardinal Adam Easton, the Norwich Benedictine and colleague of Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Ja�n, director of Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Chiara Gambacorta, describes the contents of the Forty-Sixth Chapter of the Long Text:

We cannot know ourselves in this life, but by faith and grace, but we must know ourselves sinners, and how God is never wrathful, being most near the soul, preserving it. While Julian's text reads: But our dying living that we have here, in our sensuality, does not know what our self is, except in our faith. Yet when we know and see truly and clearly what our self is, than shall we truly and clearly see and know our Lord God in fullness of joy.

And therefore it must needs be that the nearer we are to our bliss, the more we shall long, and that both by nature and by grace.

We may have knowing of our self in this life, by continual help and virtue of our high nature, in which knowing we may increase and grow by the furthering and help of mercy and grace. But we may never fully know our selves into the last point. In which point this deadly life and all manner of woe and pain shall have an end. And therefore it belongs properly to us both by nature and by grace to long and desire with all our might to know our self. In which complete knowing we shall truly and clearly know our God in fullness of endless joy. Julian, like Socrates, if it is she who writes the Norwich Castle Manuscript which includes Pelagius/Jerome's Letter to the Maid Demetriade who had Vowed Virginity, again says there ' Also it is nedful to make man and woman to know himself '. For each of these there has been the need to withdraw, like Christ in the Wilderness, into themselves, confronting themselves and evil and God, to then advise others in their spiritual combat.

We recall how Julian's texts oscillate between Annunciation and Crucifixion, mirroring the 'Book of Life of Christ' within her own 'Book of Julian of Norwich', as Angela of Foligno had counselled we ourselves do. Julian's anchorhold may mirror less the Crucifixion than it does the knitting and weaving of the life of Christ within herself, as in Psalm 139, within her body, her mind, her soul /Angelo of Foligno, Instructions XXII: pp. 293-299, XXXIV: p. 302/ , Julian's anchorhold becoming like that cave at Bethlehem (meaning House of Bread) where Christ was born, that cave at Bethlehem where Paula, Eustochium and Jerome laboured anew to give birth to the Word as the Biblia Vulgata, in their Latin tongue, the caves at Bethlehem to which St Birgitta of Sweden, Margery Kempe of Lynn and John Paul II of Rome, journeyed on their pilgrimages. In this Norwich anchorhold Julian labours in her English tongue to similarly give birth to the Word as prophecy of ourselves and God. But she does so in a pilgrimage within, not journeying to distant shrines.

Turino Vanni, Birgitta's Vision at Bethlehem . Commissioned by Chiara Gambacorta for her convent of San Domenico, now in Museo Nazionale di San Matteo, Pisa.

VII. Francesca Romana (+1440)

rancesca Romana in the following century, a married woman with children, founded an order of oblates, creating for them a monastery, her own cell by the chapel, where later where frescoed horrendous scenes of the temptations that beseiged her in prayer. Yet she was able to emerge from these images of terror, capable of miracles of healing to all those about her.

See Santa Francesca Romana and the Torre de' Specchi, Trauma and Healing: Santa Francesca Romana General/Contemplative/Scholar

These Christian women underwent something similar to a Shaman's Spirit Quest, or a Freudian analyst's psychoanalysis. They withdrew to learn themselves and God, like Mary pondering on all these things in her heart; then, when the world sought them out as divine prophets and messianic healers, they were capable of the tasks laid upon them, for instance advising a Margery Kempe to undertake her pilgrimage to the Holy Land and the writing of a book about it as therapy for what ailed her.

VIII. Elizabeth Barton

ut in 1534 storm clouds were gathering, due to Elizabeth Barton of Kent's writing a 'greate boke' of Revelations modeled on those of St Birgitta of Sweden and St Catherine of Siena, made available to her at Syon Abbey. Her spiritual director was Dr Edward Bocking, a Canterbury Benedictine. Already Robert Redman had printed a pamphlet on Elizabeth Barton's miraculous cure from an illness in Kent. Then 'Thomas Laurence of Canturbury being regester to the Archidecon of Canturbury, at the instance and desyre of the seid Edwarde Bockyng wrott a greate boke of the seid falce and feyned myracles and revelations of the seid Elizabeth in a fayre hande redy to be a copye to the prynter when the seid booke shulde be put to stampe', and that book was printed in seven hundred copies by John Skot in 1530, one copy even reaching Tyndale in exile in Antwerp.

/E.J. Devereux, 'Elizabeth Barton and Tudor Censorship', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 49 (1966), 91-106; L.E. Whatmore, 'The Sermon against the Holy Maid of Kent and her Adherents, delivered at Paul's Cross, November the 23rd, 1533, and at Canterbury, December the 7th',English Historical Review 58 (1943), p. 472; Diane Watt, 'The Prophet at Home: Elizabeth Barton and the Influence of Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena', Prophets Abroad: The Reception of Continental Holy Women in Late-Medieval England, ed. Rosalynn Voaden (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), pp. 161-176./ The Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, had fearlessly spoken out against Henry VIII's divorcing Katharine of Aragon and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, Bishop John Fisher and Cardinal Wolsey being swayed by her, though Thomas More, who spoke with her at Syon Abbey, expressed scepticism. Thomas Cromwell and Thomas Cranmer on behalf of the King had all copies of these books seized and destroyed and, on the 20th of April, 1534, Elizabeth Barton, Benedictine nun of St Sepulchre's Canterbury and Dr Edward Bocking, Benedictine monk of Canterbury Cathedral, were drawn from the Tower to Tyburn, hanged and quartered. Thus the Reformation began, and with it ended the 'cells of self-knowledge' of English anchoresses.

Two women, Marguerite Porete, in 1310, Elizabeth Barton, in 1534, were both executed for their theological books, the first perhaps influencing Julian, and with her text in the earliest extant manuscript, the Amherst, with ties to Syon Abbey, the second woman certainly influenced by Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and likely also by Julian of Norwich, whose manuscripts, and in the case of Catharina, the printed book, The Orcherd of Syon, were present at Syon Abbey in English versions where she worked on her 'greate boke' of Revelations. The encouragement by the Canterbury Benedictine, Dr Edward Bocking, of the Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, was modelled on that of Magister Mathias and Bishop Hermit Alfonso of Jaen collaborating with Birgitta of Sweden on her Revelationes , and could have also been drawn from the Norwich Benedictine, Cardinal Adam Easton, collaborating with the Anchoress, Dame Julian of Norwich, on her Showing of Love, and from the learned Carmelite Doctor of Theology, Adam Hemlyngton, and the Anchoress, Dame Emma Stapleton of Norwich, /Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and Their Patrons in Medieval England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 213-214./ even shown in the more homely version of the various scribes assisting in the writing of The Book of Margery Kempe in nearby Lynn.

Indeed we need to look at a series of books, all of which are couched about with prefaces and/or colophons, with editorial voices as well as authorial ones, Jerome enveloping Paula and Eustochium in their Bethelehem cave with careful prefaces and epistles, Gregory writing the Dialogue in which we hear the voices of Scholastica and Benedict dialogue, the Benedictine hagiographer of the Vita of Christina of Markyate, Cardinal Jacques de Vitry's hagiography of the Beguine Marie d'Oignes, Fra Arnaldo's Memorials of the Book of Angela of Foligno , Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls, The Cloud of Unknowing's colophon likely to a contemplative woman of 24, knowing no Latin, Birgitta of Sweden's Revelationes and its Epistola Solitarii penned by Alfonso of Ja�n, Catherine of Siena's Dialogo, dictated to her male disciples, Julian of Norwich's Showing of Love in the Sloane Manuscripts with chapter headings and colophon likely penned by Alfonso's colleague, Cardinal Adam Easton, O.S.B., the Book of Margery Kempe , whose second scribe is Alan of Lynn, O.Carm., indexer of Birgitta's Revelationes, the lost Revelations of Elizabeth Barton, organized by Dr Edward Bocking, O.S.B. Women become authors of and in their enclosed lives through enclosure within men's prefaces, epistles, colophons. Men and women together build cells of self-knowledge, within both silence and in dialogue.

For there are so many echoes between the writings of these different women, from the twelfth- through the sixteenth centuries, that one queries whether this is the result of inner contemplation, within one's cell of self knowledge, or whether they have been told of the contents of their predecessors' books. Are we dealing with spiritual resemblances, or intellectual borrowings? As a scholar I continue to sift the evidence, checking as to what manuscripts of what texts are available where. As a contemplative I find myself responding to these texts in their own right, as cells not only of their knowledge, but of ours, that paradox in which a cell becomes the boundless universe, and more, God's presence.

Mount Grace Priory Charterhouse

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