'COLECTIONS'

AN ENGLISH NUN IN EXILE

Birgitta at Prayer, Revelationes , Ghotan: Lübeck, 1492
 

aris, Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202, is a small manuscript, titled 'Colections', finished 23 July 1724, written by an English Benedictine nun in exile of the Paris Abbey of Our Lady of Good Hope, today St Mary's Abbey, Colwich. Its writer does not give her name, but cites her sources for her contemplations. Her Abbey possessed two, perhaps more, manuscripts of Julian of Norwich, among them the medieval exemplar manuscripts for the seventeenth century British Library Sloane and Stowe transcriptions. Some of these entries in 'Colections' clearly reflect a reading, and a memory, of Julian of Norwich's Showing. The entirety of the 'Colections' so much deserved complete transcription and publication. But I only had time, while transcribing and collating the Julian, Showing of Love, Manuscript in the Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, to jot down these entries. Then I purchased its microfilm to transcribe the whole. This fascinating text is now published as 'Colections' by an English Nun in Exile: Bibliothèque Mazarine 1202 in Professor James Hogg's University of Salzburg series, Analecta Cartusiana 119:26. The Catalogue at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, because its title page has a pasted engraving of a male Benedictine at prayer, contemptuously speaks of the text as written by a superstitious monk!

This fine manuscript has now been completely transcribed and may be found at:
 

I. An English Nun in Exile 'Colections, 1724' from Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 1202, pages 23-244, 293-381
Containing Augustine Baker, OSB, Colections, Epistle of Thaulerus, Conversio morum, Angela of Foligno, 'Other Colections', 'Colections' from Conversio morum, Dame Gertrude More, Treatise on Prayer, 'out of the scale of perfection' 'Colections' /coll.html

IIB. An English Nun in Exile Translates The Spiritual Letters of Archbishop Fenelon to Madame Guyon, Biblothèque Mazarine, MS 1202, pages 130bis-293
Archbishop Fénelon, Spiritual Letters to Madame Guyon, Miguel de Molinos, Treatise on Holy Communion, Fénelon, Feast Day Sermons /cambray2.html

III. Dame Gertrude More, OSB, On Father Augustine Baker's Way of Prayer, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 1202, pages 321-327
Dame Gertrude More, Treatise on Prayer /gmore.html

IV. Dame Catherine Gascoigne, OSB, On Father Augustine Baker's Way of Prayer, Bibliothèque Mazarine, MS 1202, pages 382-397 Dame Catherine Gascoigne, Defense of Augustine Baker /cath.html

The transcription preserves the manuscript's eighteenth-century spelling. 

{ My God, above all blesings
grant me a true peace in you
and above all curses remove
far from me a false peace in
creatures.

Title page

{ It is internity or recolectednes.

P. 14

Blessed Angela of Foligno

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

Pp. 21-22

Fenelon, Bishop of Cambrai

{ Reflect that you carry the gift of God in an earthern vessel.

P.23

{ O my beginning, when shall I return to thee and putting off whatsoever
I have been formerly, be transformed into thee.

P. 296

{ Take my self and all and give me that one in which is all things.

P. 296

{ O let my Creator come into his tabernacle and temple, where he may
remain Lord and king.

P. 296

{ My God I consecrate myself to you alone, for the whole remnant of my life,
to persue the exercises of an internal life: leaving the fruit and success of
my endeavours to your holy will.

P. 303

{ She speaks of 'desolations, obscurity of mind, & deadness of affections'.

P. 304

{ I doe renounce solicitude to please others; or to gain the affections of any to myself.

P. 304

{ Oh that I had kept inviolately the faith I promised you on my profession day when
in the presence of angells and men, of the whole triumphant or militant church,
in the sight of celestial, or terestials I was solemnly espoused to you my God.

P. 333

{ O eternall God, who hast loved me from all eternity, I am resolved to love you
the short time which remains of my life, to the end I may love you for all eternity.

P. 363

{ Jesus, my God, when shall I become a holocaust of love to you, who made your
soul an offering for sin, for my salvation.

P. 366

{ Foolish is that Religious who having broken the chains of gold and silver
which make so many captives in the world, lets herself be bound in Religion
with threads of flax, I mean with toys, or things of nothing.

P. 371

'Coll: Lady Cath[erine] G[ascoigne's] Prayer:

{ To St Arsenius , my dear Patron:

{ The Angel bid the flye, silent be
and suffer nothing to disquiet thee.
Often hath I repented to have spoken,
never to have been silent, said
St Arsenius

P. 382

St Arsenius's advice also occurs in the translation of the excerpt from Henry Suso's Horologium Sapientiae , British Library Amherst Manuscript, Additional 37,790 (which contains as well Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls Julian of Norwich's Showings, and Jan van Ruusbroec, Sparklng Stone . Dame Gertrude More , Thomas More's descendant and foundress of the English Benedictine Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation in Cambrai (today Stanbrook Abbey), the mother house to the Abbey of Our Lady of Good Hope in Paris (today St Mary's Abbey, Colwich), likewise wrote, 'I will now take thy advice given me to fly, be silent, and quiet, and I will hourly come to learn the song of love and praise of Thee', which the editor, Dom Benedict Weld-Blundell, footnotes in ' The Writings of Dame Gertrude More', 1910, p. 56, as 'words spoken from heaven to St Arsenius'. Her sister, Dame Bridget More, copied out Dame Margaret Gascoigne writing on Dame Julian of Norwich's Showings.

{ Finis
Laus Deo & Maria July 23, 1724

DAME MARGARET GASCOIGNE, DAME BRIDGET MORE

DAME BARBARA CONSTABLE, UPHOLLAND MANUSCRIPT

'COLECTIONS', MAZARINE 1202,  I AND III

SPIRITUAL LETTERS OF ARCHBISHOP FÉNELON TO MADAME GUYON, MAZARINE 1202, IIA

SPIRITUAL LETTERS OF ARCHBISHOP FÉNELON TO MADAME GUYON, MAZARINE 1202, IIB

DAME GERTRUDE MORE'S DEFENSE OF FATHER AUGUSTINE'S WAY OF PRAYER, 'COLECTIUONS, MAZARINE 1202

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