The Cell of Self-Knowledge : seven early English mystical treatises printed by Henry Pepwell in 1521
Religion
The Cell of Self-Knowledge : seven early English mystical treatises printed by Henry Pepwell in 1521
Devotional literature; Mysticism -- Great Britain; Mysticism -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500; Religious thought -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
This is not the place to tell again the wonderful story of St.
Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), one of the noblest and most truly
heroic women that the world has ever seen. Her life and manifold
activities only touched England indirectly. The famous English
captain of mercenaries, Sir John Hawkwood, was among the men of the
world who, at least for a while, were won to nobler ideals by her
letters and exhortations. Two of her principal disciples, Giovanni
Tantucci and William Flete, both Augustinian hermits, were graduates
of Cambridge; the latter, an Englishman by birth, was appointed by
her on her deathbed to preside over the continuance of her work in
her native city, and a vision of his, concerning the legitimacy of
the claims of Urban the Sixth to the papal throne, was brought
forward as one of the arguments that induced England, on the
outbreak of the Great Schism in the Church (1378), to adhere to the
Roman obedience for which Catherine was battling to the death. A
letter which she herself addressed on the same subject to King
Richard the Second has not been preserved.
About 1493, Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of
Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free
translation, by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the
addition of certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin
biography of St. Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of
Capua, the famous master-general and reformer of the order of St.
Dominic (d. 1399). He followed this up, in 1519, by an English
rendering by Brother Dane James of the Saint's mystical treatise the
Dialogo: "Here begynneth the Orcharde of Syon; in the whiche is
conteyned the reuelacyons of seynt Katheryne of Sene, with ghostly
fruytes and precyous plantes for the helthe of mannes soule."[10]
This was not translated from St. Catherine's own vernacular, but
from Friar Raymond's Latin version of the latter, first printed at
Brescia in 1496. From the first of these two works, the Lyf, are
selected the passages--the Divers Doctrines devout and
fruitful--which Pepwell here presents to us; but it seems probable
that he was not borrowing directly from Caxton, as an almost
verbally identical selection, with an identical title, is found in
the British Museum, MS. Reg. 17 D.V., where it follows the Divine
Cloud of Unknowing.
Margery Kempe is a much more mysterious personage. She has come down
to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de
Worde:--
"Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our
lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of
Lynn."
And at the end:--
"Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn.
Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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