PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWSSource: 14th Century English Mystics Newsletter, Vol. 2, No. 3 (August, 1976), pp. 5-9Published by: Penn State University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20716144 .

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Mr. Toshiyuki Takamiya, working as a visiting scholar under Professor D. S. Brewer at Darwin College, Cambridge, is preparing a critical edition of Walter Hilton's Of Angels* Song from six manuscripts (B.M. Add. 27592, Thornton MS, Cambridge M5S Dd.5.55 and Ff.5.^?f Takamiya NS 3, once in the possession of Luttrell Wynne, and Bodley 576) and one black-letter edition printed in 1521 by Henry Pepwell. He will be publishing the text of Add. 27592,. hitherto unnoticed by Hilton scholars, with a brief introduction in Studies in English Literature, English No. 1976 or 1977? published by The English Literary Society of Japan. The complete edition of Of Angels' Song with introduction, apparatus, notes, and glossary willbe published at a later date as a monograph by The Keio Insti tute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, similar to Professor Furaio Kuriyagawa's edition of Hilton's Eight Chapters on Perfection (1967). Mr. Takamiya would be grateful to have information on any other extant MS(S) of Of Angels' Song.

Father Constantino Nieva is working on a book entitledi Three Mysticst St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Author of The Cloud of Unknowing. At the Kalamazoo meeting last May, Fr. Nieva presented a paper on The Cloud of Unknowing and St. John of the Cross's Ascent of Mount Carmel, which showed not only thematic similarities between the two works, but also the use of similar terminology to describe the mystical experience.

We think our readers might be interested in learning that, in addition to Fr. Nieva's presentation, the mystics were well repre sented at Kalamazoo, as the following entries on the program attesti

Prof. Lina Cofres i, Vanderbilt University1 "Hierarchical Thought in the Spanish Middle Agesi Ram?n Lull and Don Juan Manuel."

Prof. Paula Gerson, Fordham Universityi Words, Images and the Pseudo-Areopagite at St. Denis."

Prof. Mary H. Veeder, Indiana University Northwest "Man's Acts, God's Love and the Prose Style of Rolle's The Form of Living."

Prof. Grover A. Zinn, Jr., Oberlin Collegei "Richard de St. Victor on 'Vita Activa1 and 'Vita Contemplativa'."

Prof. Elizabeth Kirk, Brown Universityi "Modes of Knowledge in Julian of Norwich."

PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS

Professor K. Reichl of the Englische Seminar der Universit?t M?nchen has edited some Middle English religious poems ini Reli giose Dichtung im englischen Hochmittelalter. Untersuchungen und Edition der HS. B.l?09 des Trinity College Cambridge (Mttnchener Universit?tsschriften, Philosophische Fakult?t, Texte und Unter suchungen zur Englischen Philologie), M?nchen, 1973?

An article in Japanese, entitled! "A Hilton KB Once in the Possession of Luttrell Wynew by Mr. Toshiyuki Takamiya, appears

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in Reports of the Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, VII (?975)t 171-91. This article also includes a list (in English) of 60 NSS of Hilton's English and Latin Scale.

Professor John Bugge of Emory University has authoredi

Virginitasi^ An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal, published by Nijhoff in 1975t in their Archives of the History of Ideas series. The book focusses on Middle English devotional literature written for women, specifically the Ancrene Riwle and the Katherine Group.

An item which, according to Father L. Shook, is "a highly interesting ad hoc application of scholarship to a contemporary instance," is Edmund Colledge's "Liberty of Spiriti 'The Mirror of Simple Souls'," Theology of Renewal, ed. L. K. Shook (New Yorki Herder and Herder, 1968), II, 100-17. The original occasion for this paper was the Congress of the Theology of Renewal held in Toronto in 1967.

Margaret Jennings, "Richard Rolle and the Three Degrees of Love," Downside Review, 93 (1975)t 193-200. In her analysis of Rolle's Commandment, Form of Living and Emendatio Vitae, Ms. Jennings compares his three degrees of love with accounts of mystical experiences found in St. Francis, Bernard of Clairvaux, the Victorines, and Rolle's own Ego Dormio. She sees in Rolle no description of truly unitive experiences to match those in Dame Julian or in the Cloud of Unknowing.

Julian and Her Norwich. Commemorative Essays and Handbook to the"""Exhibition"Revelations of Divine Love'.' Norwichi Central Public Library, 1973? This small volume contains short papers about Julian and her background as well as a catalogue of exhibi tion materials and a bibliography. The letters from those encour aging the observance in her honor testify to the vitality of Julian scholarship and devotion in the twentieth century. A statement from Fr. Edmund Colledge points to areas of further research! We still do not know all that we could about the work of such men as Baker and Cressy, and of their spiritual daughters, in preserving overseas the devout literature of the Middle Ages which post-Reformation England either destroyed or forgot. Of this work, the survival of the Julian of Norwich texts seems to be an outstanding example."

Some older studies of worth, which concern Walter Hilton and others, are as follows

Victor White, "Walter Hiltoni An English Spiritual Guide" (Guild Lecture No, 31) Londoni The Guild for Pastoral Psychology, 19^.

G. Sitwell, "Contemplation in the Scale of Perfection," Downside Review, 67 (19^9). 276-90; 68 (1950), 21-3^, 271-289. This tripartite study is a detailed examination of the Scale, showing that in its broad outlines Hilton's description of con templation "conforms exactly to that of later writers," such as St, Teresa and St. John of the Cross. Dom Sitwell also makes conparisons between the Scale and the Cloud of Unknowing.

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J. M. Russell-Smith, "Walter Hilton and a Tract in Defence of the Veneration of Imagest" Dominican Studies, 7 (195*0 t 181-84, 205-10.

A. J. Bliss, "Two Hilton Manuscripts in the Columbia Univer sity Library [Plimpton Coll. MSS. 257 and 27l]," Medium Aevum, 38 (1969), 157-63.

John Lawlor, "A Note on the Revelations of Julian of Norwich," Review of English Studies, N.S. 2 (195D? 255-58, provides a useful summary of various positions on the problem of the relation between the longer and shorter versions of the Revelations manuscript up to 1951. Lawlor affirms that the short "Amherst" manuscript is the earliest, while the longer vers ion is the product of Julian's mature reflection on her visions.

S ister Mary Eleanor Eaton. "The Use of Scripture by the English Mystics." Diss. Stanford University, 1954 (Ann Arbori University Microfilms, Pubi. No. 8214) Chapter IV of this study is devoted directly to the use of Scripture by the English mystics. There is also an appendix with a list of biblical texts located in Hilton's Scale of Perfection. Otherwise, the material deals with the back ground of scriptural exegesis and translation, information useful for the introductory study of the mystics of medieval England.

The following three dissertations were cited in our MLa/MKRA bibliography (II, 1 and 2), but we feel deserve fuller mention. We would again ask our readers to inform us of in-progress or completed dissertations and give us a brief summary of their thesis, for inclus ion in future issues of the Newsletter.

Sam J. Womack, Jr. "The Jubilus Theme in the Later Writings of Richard Rolle." Diss. Duke University, I96I. DA 22, 936. This study appraises the mystical attainments of Richard Rolle through studying his later works, to see if the theme of joy per sists. Mr. Womack takes such persistence as evidence that Rolle matured to the highest level of mystical experience. The author includes background on the history of hermits, monasticism, and the church in the 14th century. He sums up Rolle's insights in these words "Love is ultimate reality; love is also joy* and joy is song," and sees Rolle as using song as the major symbol of mystical union.

Mary Elizabeth Harris. "The Word in the Wilderness? Style in English Anchoritic Prose." Diss. University of California, 1970. DA 31, 4162a. After an introductory chapter on the back grounds of the eremitic prose tradition, Ms, Harris' next three chapters offer detailed stylistic analyses of Ailred of Rivaulx's De Institutione Inclusarum, The Ancrene Riwle, and Richard Rolle's The Form of Living. These three authors, according to the writer, represent a distinctive prose tradition because of the similarity of their rhetorical situation ~ a spiritual guide speaking to a female pupil. Accordingly, all three works are marked by a personal tone, the rhetoric of persuas ion, and flexible and innovative styles.

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The final chapter considers why Rolle marks the end of the vital phase of anchoritic prose, and questions Chambers' version of the continuity of English prose, arguing that "If we are to trace a great medieval prose tradition, vitality, technical innovation and literary effectiveness must be our criteria."

James F. Maybury, Jr. "Sacramentalism in the Ancrene Riwlet Its Method and Its Tradition." Diss. University of Massachusetts, 1970. DA 31, 362A. Maybury's study has a fourfold purpose! "To describe the spiritual understanding of the natural world as it is evidenced in the Ancrene Riwle; to suggest, by historical survey, the milieu in which this understanding flourished, in exegesis and, where applicable, in the Phys iologus and bestiary traditions; to denote and discuss probable sources for specific interpretations in the Riwle; and, lastly, to assess ... the maturity and inde pendence of its exegesis." Possible sources considered are works by St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Eucher, Isidore of Seville, Alcuin5 Rabanus Maurus, Alexander Neckam, the Victorines, and especially St. Gregory's Moralium libri.

Finally, because of her great interest in continental women mystics of the Kiddle Ages, Professor Gertrud Champe of Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, has forwarded the following review

Frances Gooday, "Mechthild of Magdeburg and Hadewijch of Antwerp; A Comparison," 0ns Geestelijk Erf, XLVIIT,4 (1974), 305-62.

This article,^representing the core of Gooday's doctoral dissertation, is a search for affinities between the first two women mystics to write both poetry and prose in their respective vernaculars. Mechthild's Fliessendes Licht der Gottheit and Hadewijch's Strophische Gedichten, Brieven, Mengeldichten, Visioenen and her Lijst der Volmaakten are the texts under consi deration.

Gooday begins with a brief review of earlier comparative studies of the two mystics and shows that scholars have been all too ready to see a similarity between the two writers on small evidence; Mechthild and Hadewijck have often been linked for the sake of two or three shared words or phrases. The greatest at tention in this review is given to an article by Hans Neumann, who sees the two writers as being related because they are both 3eguines, both use the vernacular, and both write in prose and verse forms. As a result of Mechthild1s statement that she knows no Latin (which Gooday suspects is a humility formula), Nuemann considers that she might be unsure of her ability to write, and finds it believable that she might have used Hadewijch as a model. He also points out the fact that Mechthild's text marks the first appearance in German of a number of words which are found in the texts of Hadewijch. On the other hand, Neumann finds no similarities between the poetics of the two writers.

Gooday's work consists of a lexical comparison of the two bodies of writing, using the following categories 1 spiritual beings and their habitations, mirine and love, ecclesiastical imagery, courtly terminology, Biblical and natural imagery. Her conclusion

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is that in spite of the great overlap in the vocabularies, and in the women's knowledge of Scripture and the courtly tradition, there is a remarkable divergence in the ways they use the materials. "Both must have read the same Fsalms and heard the same Scripture readings, yet never do they put more than two words together in the same way*"

Dr. Gooday's article does much to further the productive study of the works of Mechthild and Hadewijch. The author has intelli gently upheld the principle that nothing can be said about a liter ary lexicon without examining the contexts in which it is used. In so doing, she forestalls any futile comparative work on these mystics. On the other hand, by her sens itive and minute establish ment of categories of images, Gooday has revealed the richness and variety of the texts she has studied. This is a great impetus for the examination of the individual texts as poetic entities and as manifestations of contemporary religious and secular ideas.

NEWSLETTER BOOK REVIEW

William Johnston. The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing! A Modern Interpretation! With a Foreword by Thomas Merton. Religious Experience Series, Vol. 8. St. Meinrad, Indiana! Abbey Press, 1975.

This is a reprint of Fr. Johns ton's I965 work. It is fitting somehow that one of the most scholarly of the medieval English mystics should have a book like this written about his undertakings. While this study is highly abstruse in places, it is always ortho dox, learned, thorough, and apologetic. Just as the author of The Cloud warned that his writings were not for everyone, Fr. Johnston's volume will not suit those merely browsing through medieval tracts 1 it is intended for the most serious reader, the theologically sophisticated.

Thomas Merton makes clear in his brief Foreword that one of Fr. Johnston's most lasting contributions is his use of Zen com parisons, analogues, and explanations. Merton speaks of the author of The Cloud as one "in the apophatic tradition," and this is the emphasis that Fr. Johnston keeps throughout.

This book treats all seven works by the Cloud author, and is especially valuable for that reason. In addition, Fr. Johnstones use of other mystical writers fleshes out the tradition within which the Cloud author is working in a unique way.

There is an interesting Appendix on "Horizontal and Vertical Thinking" which attempts to clarify this distinction which is used throughout. Fr. Johnston emphasizes that both "are ordinary; both are found in many cultures ; both are found inside and outs ide Christianity." Vertical is the mystical mode par excellence.

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