Abstract
This paper, part of a long-term programme of research into the forms and functions of the vernacular in late medieval liturgical practice in England, offers a “cultural map” of the Middle English poem known as The Lay Folks’ Mass Book (LFMB). Comparatively little research has been undertaken on LFMB since Simmons’s edition of 1879. However, new developments in the study of manuscript-reception in particular regions of the Middle English-speaking areas of Britain, combined with greater understanding of the cultural dynamics of “manuscript miscellanies” and of medieval liturgical practice, allow us to reconstruct with greater certainty the contexts within which LFMB was copied and used. LFMB survives in nine late medieval copies, but each copy presented a distinct version of the text. This article brings together linguistic, codicological, liturgical, and textual information, showing in detail how the poem was repurposed for a range of different cultural functions. In geographical terms, it seems clear that the work circulated in Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire, in Yorkshire, and in Norfolk, and can thus be related to other texts circulating in those areas. Some versions are likely to have emerged in parochial settings, possibly owned by local priests. There is also evidence that the text could be deployed in monastic contexts, while other versions probably formed part of the reading of pious gentry. What emerges from a study of the codices in which copies of LFMB were transmitted is that a range of shaping sensibilities for these manuscripts may be distinguished; the authorial role in texts such as LFMB was balanced with that of their copyists and audiences. In the manuscripts containing LFMB creativity was negotiated within textually-transmitted communities of practice.
References
Baugh, Albert C. (ed.). 1956. The English text of the Ancrene Riwle, edited from British Museum MS. Royal 8.C.i. Early English Text Society
Blake, Norman (ed.). 1972. Middle English religious prose. Arnold.
Bülbring, Karl. 1905. Das Lay-Folks’ Mass-Book in der Handschrift der Advocates Library in Edinburgh. Englische Studien 35. 29–33.
Foster, Florence (ed.). 1916. The Northern Passion. Early English Text Society.
Furnivall, Frederick (ed.). 1882. The fifty earliest English wills. Early English Text Society.
Gerould, Gordon H. 1904. The Lay-Folks’ Mass-Book from MS Gg V.31, Cambridge University Library. Englische Studien 33. 1–26.
Greig, Pamela. 2018. The Lay Folks’ Catechism: An edition. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nottingham.
Hanna, Ralph (ed.). 2007. Richard Rolle: Uncollected prose and verse. Early English Text Society.
Hanna, Ralph (ed.). 2009. Speculum Vitae: A reading edition. Early English Text Society.
Hardman, Philippa (ed.). 2000. The Heege Manuscript: A facsimile of National Library of Scotland MS Advocates’ 19.3.1. University of Leeds, School of English.
Littlehales, Henry (ed.). 1895–1897. The Prymer, or Lay-Folks’ Prayer-Book. Early English Text Society.
Powell, Susan (ed.). 2009. John Mirk’s Festial. Early English Text Society.
Simmons, Thomas F. (ed.). 1879. The Lay Folks’ Mass Book. Early English Text Society.
Simmons, Thomas F. & Henry E. Nolloth (eds.). 1901. The Lay Folks’ Catechism. Early English Text Society.
Aston, Margaret. 1984. Lollards and reformers: Images and literacy in late medieval religion Hambledon.
Aveling, Judith. 2016. The Holy Name of Jesus: A literate cult? In Sally Harper, Paul Barnwell & Magnus Williamson (eds.), Late medieval liturgies enacted, Routledge. 191–204.
Baker, Joan 1997. Editing the Middle English romance Robert of Sicily: Theory, text, and method. Text 10. 161–179.
Barnwell, Paul S. 2016. The nature of late medieval worship: the mass. In Sally Harper, Paul Barnwell & Magnus Williamson (eds.), Late medieval liturgies enacted, Routledge. 207–218.
Bennett, Henry S. 1947. Chaucer and fifteenth-century verse and prose. Clarendon Press
Benskin, Michael. 1991. The “fit”-technique explained. In Felicity Riddy (ed.), Regionalism in late medieval manuscripts and texts: Essays celebrating the publication of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, Brewer. 9–26.
Bishop, Edmund. 1897. The origin of the Prymer. In Henry Littlehales (ed.), The Prymer, or Lay-Folks’ Prayer-Book, Part II, Early English Text Society. xi–xxxviii.
Carruthers, Mary. 1990. The book of memory. Cambridge University Press.
Connolly, Margaret. 2003. Books for the “helpe of euery persoone þat þenkiþ to be saued”: Six devotional anthologies from fifteenth-century London. Yearbook of English Studies 33. 170–181. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.2307/3509024
Connolly, Margaret. 2011. Compiling the book. In Alexandra Gillespie & Daniel Wakelin (eds.), The production of books in England 1350–1500, Cambridge University Press. 129–149.
Connolly, Margaret & Linne Mooney (eds.). 2008. Design and distribution of late medieval manuscripts in England. Brewer.
Connolly Margaret, & Raluca Radulescu (eds.). 2015. Insular books: Vernacular manuscript miscellanies in late medieval Britain. The British Academy.
Corbellini, Sabrina, Giovanna Murano & Giacomo Signore (eds.). 2018. Collecting, organizing and transmitting knowledge: Miscellanies in late medieval Europe. Brepols.
Crumley, Carole L. 1995. Heterarchy and the analysis of complex societies. Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 6(1). 1–5. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1525/ap3a.1995.6.1.1
Duffy, Eamon. 2001. The voices of Morebath. Reformation and rebellion in an English village. Yale University Press.
Duffy, Eamon. 2005. The stripping of the altars. Traditional religion in England, 1400–1580. (2nd edn.) Yale University Press.
Duffy, Eamon. 2006. Marking the hours. English people and their prayers, 1240–1570. Yale University Press
Edwards, Anthony S. G. 2007. The Speculum Guy de Warwick and Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick: The non-romance Middle English tradition. In Rosalind Field & Alison Wiggins (eds.), Guy of Warwick: Icon and ancestor, Brewer. 81–93.
Fox, Adam. 2000. Oral and literate culture in England 1500–1700. Oxford University Press.
Garrison, Jennifer. 2017. Challenging communion: The Eucharist and Middle English literature. Ohio University Press.
Hanna, Ralph. 1996. Miscellaneity and vernacularity: conditions of literary production in late medieval England. In Stephen G. Nichols & Siegfried Wenzel (eds.), The whole book: Cultural perspectives on the medieval miscellany, University of Michigan Press. 37–51.
Hanna, Ralph. 2010. English manuscripts of Richard Rolle: A descriptive catalogue. Liverpool University Press.
Hardman, Philippa. 1975. A note on some ‘lost’ manuscripts. The Library s5–30(3). 245–247. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1093/library/s5-XXX.3.245
Hardman, Philippa. 1978. A mediaeval “library in parvo”. Medium Ævum 47(2). 262–273.
Harper, Sally, Paul Barnwell & Magnus Williamson (eds.). 2016. Late medieval liturgies enacted. The experience of worship in cathedral and parish church. Routledge.
Hudson, Anne. 1985. A new look at The Lay Folks’ Catechism. Viator 16. 243–258. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301425
Hudson, Anne. 1996. “Springing cockel in our clene corn”: Lollard preaching in England around 1400. In Scott L. Waugh & Pieter Diehl (eds.), Christendom and its discontents. Exclusion, persecution, and rebellion, 1000–1500, Cambridge University Press. 132–147.
James, Montague R. 1907. A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College. Cambridge University Press.
Jasper, David & Jeremy J. Smith. 2019. The Lay Folks’ Mass Book and Thomas Frederick Simmons: Medievalism and the Tractarians. Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70(4). 785–804. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1017/S002204691900054X
Johnson, Ian (forthcoming). 2020. Theorizing the miscellaneous and the Middle English Biblical paratext. In Denis Renevey, Marleen Cré & Diana Denissen (eds.), Late medieval religiosity in England: The evidence of late fourteenth and fifteenth-century devotional compilations. Brepols.
Jolliffe, P.S. 1974. A check-list of Middle English prose writings of spiritual guidance. Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.
Ker, Neil R. 1964. Medieval libraries of Great Britain. Royal Historical Society.
Ker, Neil R. 1983. Medieval manuscripts in British libraries. Vol. III: Lampeter-Oxford. Clarendon Press.
LALME = McIntosh, Angus, Michael L. Samuels & Michael Benskin, with Margaret Laing & Keith Williamson. 1986. A linguistic atlas of late mediaeval English. Aberdeen University Press.
Martin, C. Anthony. 1981. Middle English manuals of religious instruction. In Michael Benskin & Michael L. Samuels (eds.), So meny people longages and tonges: Philological essays in Scots and mediaeval English presented to Angus McIntosh, Middle English Dialect Project. 283–298.
Minnis, Alastair. 1984. Medieval theory of authorship. Scholastic literary attitudes in the later Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Nichols, Stephen G. & Siegfried Wenzel (eds.). 1996. The whole book: Cultural perspectives on the medieval miscellany. University of Michigan Press.
NIMEV = Boffey, Julia & Anthony S. G. Edwards. 2005. A new index of Middle English verse. The British Library.
Ordnance Survey. 1978. Monastic Britain. Ordnance Survey.
Parkes, Malcolm B. 1992. Pause and effect: An introduction to the history of punctuation in the West. Scolar Press.
Perry, Ryan. 2007. The Clopton manuscript and the Beauchamp affinity: Patronage and reception issues in a West Midlands reading community. In Wendy Scase (ed.), Essays in manuscript geography. Vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the sixteenth century, Brepols. 131–159. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.3.2767
Pfaff, Richard W. 2009. The liturgy in Medieval England: A history. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511642340
Powell, Susan. 1994. The transmission and circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism. In Alastair Minnis (ed.), Late medieval religious texts and their transmission: Essays in honour of A.I. Doyle, Brewer. 67–84.
Powell, Susan. 1997. What Caxton did to the Festial. Journal of the Early Book Society 1. 48–77.
Raymo, Richard. 1986. Works of religious and philosophical instruction. In J. Burke Severs & Albert E. Hartung (eds.), A manual of the writings in Middle English 1050–1500, VII, Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2255–2378.
Salisbury, Matthew Cheung. 2016. Establishing a liturgical “text”: Text for performance, performance as text. In Sally Harper, Paul Barnwell & Magnus Williamson (eds.), Late medieval liturgies enacted, Routledge. 93–106.
Samuels, Michael L. 1963. Some applications of Middle English dialectology. English Studies 44. 81–94. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1080/00138386308597155
Scase, Wendy. 1992. Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter and John Colop’s “common-profit” books: Aspects of book ownership and circulation in fifteenth-century London. Medium Ævum 61(2). 261–274. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.2307/43629433
Scase, Wendy (ed.). 2007. Essays in manuscript geography. Vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the sixteenth century. Brepols. DOI: 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.6.09070802050003050106090500
Scott-Macnab, David. 2010. The Hunttyng of the Hare in the Heege manuscript. Anglia 128(1). 102–123. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1515/angl.2010.009
Smalley, Beryl. 1983. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, third edition. Oxford: Blackwell
Smith, Jeremy J. 2013a. Mapping the language of the Vernon Manuscript. In Wendy Scase (ed.), The making of the Vernon Manuscript. The production and contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. 1. Brepols. 49–70.
Smith, Jeremy J. 2013b. Punctuating Mirk’s Festial: A Scottish text and its implications. In Martha Driver & Veronica O’Mara (eds.), Preaching the word in manuscript and print in late medieval England: Essays in honour of Susan Powell, Brepols. 161–192.
Smith, Jeremy J. 2020. Transforming early English: The reinvention of early English and Older Scots. Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781108333474
Somerset, Fiona. 2013. Feeling like saints: Lollard writings after Wyclif. Cornell University Press.
Spencer, H. Leith. 1993. English preaching in the Late Middle Ages. Clarendon Press. DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112037.001.0001
Stark, David. 2001. Heterarchy: Exploiting ambiguity and organizing diversity. Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 21(1). 21–39.
Thompson, John. 2008. The Middle English Prose Brut and the possibilities of cultural mapping. In Margaret Connolly & Linne Mooney (eds.), Design and distribution of late medieval manuscripts in England, Brewer. 245–260.
Thomson, Rodney. 2011. A descriptive catalogue of the medieval manuscripts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Brewer.
Turville-Petre, Thorlac. 1983. Some medieval English manuscripts in the North-East Midlands. In Derek Pearsall, (ed.), Manuscripts and readers in fifteenth-century England, Brewer. 125–141.
Watson, Andrew G. 1987. Medieval libraries of Great Britain: Supplement. Royal Historical Society.
Woolf, Rosemary. 1968. English religious lyric in the Middle Ages. Clarendon.