JULIAN
OF NORWICH, HER SHOWING OF LOVE AND ITS CONTEXTS ©1997-2008
JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY ||
JULIAN
OF NORWICH || SHOWING
OF LOVE || HER TEXTS || HER
SELF || ABOUT HER TEXTS || BEFORE
JULIAN || HER CONTEMPORARIES || AFTER
JULIAN || JULIAN IN OUR TIME || ST
BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN || BIBLE
AND WOMEN || EQUALLY
IN GOD'S IMAGE ||
MIRROR
OF SAINTS || BENEDICTINISM ||
THE
CLOISTER || ITS
SCRIPTORIUM || AMHERST
MANUSCRIPT ||
PRAYER ||
CATALOGUE
AND PORTFOLIO (HANDCRAFTS, BOOKS ) ||
BOOK
REVIEWS || BIBLIOGRAPHY
||
Benedictinism Website
JULIAN OF NORWICH'S SHOWING OF LOVE:
THE MARGARET GASCOIGNE/BRIDGET MORE FRAGMENT (G)
ST MARY'S ABBEY, COLWICH, H18, FOLIOS 155-161
Dame Bridget More, O.S.B.
ame
Margaret
Gascoigne,
OSB, an exiled English
Benedictine
nun at Cambrai in Flanders, died there in 1637, hers being the first
grave
within the shadow of their monastic house.(1) Before that date she had
compiled a contemplative anthology of her devotions. In its Chapter
Forty-Two,
she had copied out a fragment from a medieval Julian exemplar likely
present
at Cambrai, and commented upon its text. She misreads, or only
partially
reads, the text, believing that Julian dies, rather than lives,
following
her death-bed vision of 1373. Nevertheless she responds appropriately
to
her reading, taking Julian's experiencing of God's presence into her
own
intense life of monastic prayer. In so doing she is part of a
Benedictine
continuity of contemplation, a continuity that transcends time and
gender,
caring only that the soul be oned with God in eternity that equally
included
women with men, to be attained in a community where all are vowed to
conversion
from worldliness, to stability and to obedience.
Dame Margaret Gascoigne's book
of
devotions would likely have been found in her cell at her death and was
treasured by her Benedictine Sisters who particularly made copies of it
when the Cambrai daughter house was founded at Paris. The copy that
survives,
called by Placid Spearitt, OSB, 'Gascoigne B', was most carefully
made
by Dame Bridget More, OSB, descendant of Thomas More, sister of the
foundress of the Cambrai Our Lady of Consolation, Dame
Gertrude More, OSB, and herself first Prioress of the Paris Our
Lady of Good Hope. Another of their relatives was Dame
Agnes More, again a descendant of Thomas More, who wrote a
treatise
influenced by Julian of Norwich, titled
The Building of Divine Love.
While Dame
Clementia Cary, OSB, was the Foundress of the Paris house;
being
the daughter of Viscount Falkland, Viceroy in Ireland, she had contacts
with Caroline royalty, especially Queen Henrietta Maria, and she
brought
with her into community her father's chaplain, Serenus Cressy, OSB,
who would publish the first edition of Julian of Norwich's Showings
in 1670.(2) Dame Margaret Gascoigne had been sister to Dame Catherine
Gascoigne, OSB, who was elected first Abbess of Our Lady of
Consolation
in Cambrai in 1629, both coming from Yorkshire, their niece, Dame
Justina
Gascoigne, succeeding Dame Bridget More as Prioress at Our Lady of Good
Hope in Paris in 1665.
The party of English women had
settled
in Cambrai in 1623, and within six months they had petitioned the
President
of the English Congregation to send them a monk qualified to train them
in Benedictine contemplative prayer. In answer, they were joined in
1624
by Father Augustine
Baker, OSB, who became their spiritual director until his
stormy
removal in 1633, when he returned to Douai. He went back to England in
1638, dying there in 1641.
The Paris daughter house,
founded
in 1651, brought forth an intense burst of copying of all devotional
books
in the Cambrai library prior to that removal, the greatest number being
executed by Dame Barbara Constable, who had joined the Cambrai
community
from Yorkshire in 1645,(3) the copied books including Dame Bridget
More's
manuscript of Dame Margaret Gascoigne (G), Dame Barbara Constable's
fragmentary
manuscript of Julian's Showings (U), and Dame Clementia Cary's
complete
manuscript of Julian's Showings (S1). Another complete
manuscript
is found with S1 and given the siglum S2. Both these manuscripts have
careful
annotations made in preparation for the 1670 first edition. Yet another
manuscript is the most carefully prepared Stowe 42, turning the queries
and NBs of S1 and S2 into carefully prepared but not quite finished
shoulder
notes from which Serenus Cressy's 1670 edition was to be typeset. All
these
manuscripts tend to give the words to Christ to Julian in larger script
than they do the texts in which these are embedded.
How did Margaret Gascoigne and
the
Cambrai and Paris communities come by a medieval exemplar of Julian's Showings?
It is possible that they acquired the exemplar for the Paris Long Text,
Bibliothèque Nationale, Anglais 40 (which in their day was shut
up in the Bigot collection in Rouen), but which had been copied out by
Syon
Abbey in exile in Flanders. They could have obtained that exemplar
from Sheen Anglorum. But the manuscripts of G, U, S1 and S2 all differ
from P in that they enlarge or underline Christ's words to Julian,
while
P rubricates them. The other possibility is that Dame Margaret
Gascoigne
had treasured a Julian manuscript that had remained in her family since
the days of Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford and patron of Syon
Abbey
(4), and which was to engender in turn G, U, S1, S2, C1 and Serenus
Cressy's
published edition from C1 as C2.
These texts were read and
copied
in the midst of a living community of prayer and contemplation, and one
that continues today at Stanbrook and at Colwich. But the Sisters had
to
fight with every weapon of love and obedience to preserve their
manuscripts,
including their manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showings. In
1655,
they were ordered by Dom Claude White, then President of the English
Benedictine
Congregation, to surrender their contemplative books which were
perceived
'to containe poysonous, pernicious and diabolicall doctrine'. The
Abbess
and the Sisters prostrated themselves before Dom White, refusing, in
charity,
to surrender their books (one of them their exemplar manuscript of
Julian's
Showings
),
We humbly beseech your Very
Reverend
Paternity to pardon us that we do not answer you in the simple word of
I or No, we having given your Paternity many reasons why wee could not
answer I, and as for No, without the necessary circumstances wee feared
it might carry a show of disrespect to your Very Reverend Paternity to
whom we owe and desire to perform all dutifull obedience and respect.(5)
It was perhaps, knowing of such
danger
to their books, that Cambrai had already carefully duplicated these for
their Paris daughter house. There, once again, their spiritual director
was favourable to Augustine Baker's methods for encouraging
contemplation
in the seventeenth century through the reading and writing of
fourteenth-century
texts. Father Serenus
Cressy, OSB, their chaplain, not only encouraged their scribal
activity, but he had them help him prepare an excellent edition of
Julian
of Norwich's
Showings for its eventual 1670 publication. That strategy
of carefully copying out their contemplative books from the past,
preserving
them for the future, stood the English Benedictines in good stead. When
most of the Cambrai books were lost at the French Revolution, those at
Paris to a large extent survived, including Dame Bridget More's copy of
Dame Margaret Gascoigne's Devotions with its passage from
Julian's
Showings
written out in a most lovely hand and lovingly sewn together, and which
were brought to England to safety. To England also came the Upholland
Manuscript
with its Julian excerpts copied out by Dame Barbara Constable. Her
portrait
survives.(6) To England likewise came the two Sloane Manuscripts with
their
complete copies of Julian's Showings, the first copied out by
Dame
Clementia Cary, Foundress of the Paris house. Perhaps even the Westminster
Cathedral Manuscript was shipped back to England from Lisbon's Syon
Abbey in exile during this period. Perhaps only the Paris,
Bibliothèque
Nationale, Anglais 40, remains now in exile. But, on the other hand,
perhaps
there are two further Julian of Norwich Showings manuscripts on
the Continent, the lost exemplar manuscripts, which may still be in
Holland
and in Belgium, and which the writer of this Juliansite essay
challenges
her readers to find.
Text:
42
foes, & all pleasures
into paines,
yet
art thou inough to
me,these
other
things being all as
nothing
in regarde
of thee, who hast all good
in
thee, and
art and euer shallt be all
in
all to me,
And euen but to remember
these
thy
most delicious wordes;
I am inough
to thee, is
so great a ioie to my
hart, that all the
afflictions,
that are,
or (as I hope) euer shall
fall
upon
me (at least which I can
imagin)
do
and shall cause me to
receaue
from
them somuch comforte,
solace,
and
encouragement, as that I
hope
by
thy grace, they shall be
most
dear=
lie welcome vnto me. Thou
there
saiest farther, reioice
in thy sa=
uiour and in thy saluation;
but though my loue be so
colde,
that
I am farre from goeng this
as
I
___________________________
ought, yet I desire
that with
all the might,
and powers of my soule,
and
with all the
affection of my harte, I
could
reioice
in thy infinite happines;
and
though
my soule be neuer so poore
and
in
neuer so great miseries,
yet
I desire
according to such abilitie
as
is in me
of thy gift, to ioy and
reioy
together with
thee, for what
thou art and doest
possesse in thy immense
riches,
power and glorie
, and in all that
is pleasing to thee in all
things,
in thy
selfe and in all thy
creatures,
in the
riches of others, and my
owne
pouertie
and miserie (for to them,
whom
thou
art pleasing to, what
thing
of thine
can be displeasing.) and
what
is wan=
ting in me (through
disabilitie)
to
performe in this matter, I
will
re=
ioice and exullt in hart,
that
in all
fullnes and perfection it
is
supplied
____________________________
and aboundeth in thee
thy self,
where
I hope my selfe
accordinglie
in the
time which thou hast from
eternitie
foreordained for it, to
finde
by ex=
perience such supplie and
amends
for all mine and other
creatures
in=
sufficiencies in the
matter.
I farther=
more reioice in
my Saluation which
I confidentlie hope in
vertue
of thy
most free and liberall
goodnes,
in the
end to obtaine at the
handes
of thy
mercie, and in no sorte as
if
I could
expect anie such matter as
due
to me or merited by me,
nor
anie
other waies to be attained
to
by me,
then by thy free giuft and
meere
mercie (in vertue of the
grace
and
deserts of my most deere
Lorde
and sauiour
Jesu Christ thy onlie
and most dearelie beloued
sonne)
____________________________
which mercies and
goodnesses
of thine I
haue allreadie in various
maners
euen
in my owne most unworthie
selfe
so
greatlie and so
frequentlie
experienced, that
I can not, nor maie
heerafter
doubt there=
of, but euer maie, must,
and
will to the
end confidentlie hope in
thesame,
and
thereon onlie and wholie
relie.
Since editing the above I
enquired of Dame Margaret Truran about their
manuscript of Augustine Baker on Dame Margaret Gascoigne and she has
kindly
sent the following:
The passage in Fr
Baker’s Life and Death of Dame Margaret
Gascoigne on Julian of Norwich runs as follows (my transcript).
"She upon Sunday at
night, being the Vigil of St Laurence,
in bed beginning to be distressed in body, and the next morning after
being
present at Mass she there fainted and was carried thence into the
Infirmary
where remaining to her expiration or last Agony in perfect use of her
senses,
she for that space spent her thoughts wholly towards God, and in
preparation
for death, if God should please to send it, and which she esteemed
(considering
how she found her state of body) would be her lot by means of the
Extraordinary
Indisposition & sickness she was now in. Towards the said good
Preparation
for Death, and to hold her the more continually and efficaciously
therein,
she caused one that was oft conversant & familiar with her to place
(written at and underneath the Crucifix, that remained there before
her,
and which she regarded with her eyes during her sickness and till her
death)
the holy words that had sometime been spoken by God to the holy Virgin
Juliana the Anchoress of Norwich, as appeareth by the Old Manuscript
Book
of her Revelations, and with the which words our Dame had ever formerly
been much delighted: ‘Intend (or attend) to me. I am enough for thee:
rejoice
in me thy Saviour and in thy salvation.’ Those words, I say, remained
before
her eyes beneath the Crucifix till her death." Stanbrook Baker
MS 19
(copy
of Downside Abbey Baker MS 42), pp 46-47.
Gaudium Paschale!
Sr Margaret OSB
Notes
1.'Dame Catherine
Gascoigne,
1600-1676',
In
a Great Tradition: Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of
Stanbrook,
ed., The Benedictines of Stanbrook, p. 18.
2. [Sr.
Benedict], How We
Began:
The Monastery of Our Lady of Good Hope, St Mary's Abbey, Colwich.
3. Placid
Spearitt, OSB,
'The
Survival of Mediaeval Spirituality Among the Exiled English Black
Monks',
American
Benedictine Review 25 (1974), pp. 289-293.
4.'Dame Catherine
Gascoigne', In
a Great Tradition, ed. Benedictines of Stanbrook, p. 4. For Thomas
Gascoigne, see Julia Bolton Holloway, Saint Bride and her Book:
Birgitta
of Sweden's 'Revelations'; Birger Gregersson and Thomas Gascoigne,
The
Life of St Birgitta, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway. Thomas Gascoigne
obsessively
collected and annotated all items connected with St Birgitta and would
have been similarly interested in her English contemporary.
5. 'Dame
Catherine Gascoigne',
In
A Great Tradition, ed. Benedictines of Stanbrook, p. 25.
6. It is given in the Catholic
Record Society 13 (1913), and reproduced in the hard copy booklet,
along with the pencil-drawn portrait of Dame Bridget More, OSB, the
booklet also giving the facsimile of the actual manuscript text of H18.
Since the
original writing of
this essay in my Anglican convent, the Revd Dr John Clark has been
editing
all of Dom Augustine Baker, OSB's writings, and these are published
by Professor James Hogg in his University of Salzburg Analecta
Carthusiana series. Their titles may be retrieved at http://www.florin.ms/libbeth.html
Ordering information is given at http://www.umilta.net/shop.html
Fr Augustine Baker OSB. Alphabet
and Order. Ed.
John
Clark.
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität
Salzburg,
2001. James Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. St
Benedict's Rule. Ed. John
Clark.
Analecta Cartusiana 119.24, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für
Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2005. 3 vols.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Collections
I-III and The Twelve
Mortifications
of Harphius. Ed. John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.21, ed. James
Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Universität
Salzburg, 2004. James Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Directions
for Contemplation. Book
D.
Ed. John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.11, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1999.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Directions
for Contemplation. Book
F.
Ed. John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.12, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1999.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Directions
for Contemplation. Book
G.
Ed. John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.13, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2000.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Directions
for Contemplation. Book
H.
Ed. John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.14, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2000.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Discretion.
Ed. John Clark.
Analecta
Cartusiana 119.9, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik
und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1999.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Doubts
and Calls. Ed. John
Clark.
Analecta
Cartusiana 119.102, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für
Anglistik
und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1998. James Hogg,
Salzburg,
2006.
Fr Augustine Baker OSB. Five
Treatises: The Life and Death of Dame Margaret Gascoigne; Treatise of
Confession. Analecta
Cartusiana 119.23, ed. James
Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2006.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. A
Secure Stay in all Temptations.
Ed.
John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.8, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1999.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Secretum.
Introduction and
Notes,
John
Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.20, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut
für
Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2003. James
Hogg,
Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Secretum.
Ed. John Clark.
Analecta
Cartusiana
119.7, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und
Amerikanistik
Universität Salzburg, 1997. James Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. A
Spiritual Treatise . . . Called
A.B.C.
Ed. John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.17, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2001.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
Fr. Augustine Baker OSB. Vox
Clamantis in Deserto Animae.
Ed.
John Clark. Analecta Cartusiana 119.22, ed. James Hogg. Salzburg:
Institut
für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 2004.
James
Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
That Mysterious Man:
Essays on Augustine Baker OSB 1575-1641.
Ed. Michael Woodward. Introduced Rowan Williams. Analecta Cartusiana
119.15,
ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und
Amerikanistik
Universität Salzburg, 2001. James Hogg, Salzburg, 2006.
JULIAN
OF NORWICH, SHOWING OF LOVE
I, II, III
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
JULIAN
OF NORWICH, HER SHOWING OF LOVE AND ITS CONTEXTS ©1997-2008
JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY ||
JULIAN
OF NORWICH || SHOWING
OF LOVE || HER TEXTS || HER
SELF || ABOUT HER TEXTS || BEFORE
JULIAN || HER CONTEMPORARIES || AFTER
JULIAN || JULIAN IN OUR TIME || ST
BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN || BIBLE
AND WOMEN || EQUALLY
IN GOD'S IMAGE ||
MIRROR
OF SAINTS || BENEDICTINISM |
THE
CLOISTER || ITS
SCRIPTORIUM || AMHERST
MANUSCRIPT ||
PRAYER ||
CATALOGUE
AND PORTFOLIO (HANDCRAFTS, BOOKS ) ||
BOOK
REVIEWS || BIBLIOGRAPHY
||
