for women. Unlike a monk, who undertakes a “quest” to attain his spiritual ideal, a nun, in this male conception of female monasticism, ideally begins and ends in the same state.60
The prose translation makes another subtle change to the sense of the Latin which points to negative clerical attitudes about the ways in which female spirituality and nature differ from male spirituality and nature. Chapter XX concerns the proper way to pray. Both the Latin and the English prose version say prayer should be brief and devout; both, however, make exceptions to this rule. The Latin makes the exception “nisi forte ex affectu inspirationis divinae gratiae protendatur” (RB 1980 216), but the English says, “Bot yef it sua bi-tide, þat any falle in mis-trouz; þan sal scho pray gerne to god” (Prose 19). According to the Middle English Dictionary, “mis-trouz” means doubt, disbelief, suspicion, or mistrust, quite a departure from the exception of “affectu inspirationis divinae gratiae” for which the Latin allows.61 The Latin envisions the positive possibility of the inspiration of divine grace leading to prolonged prayer for men; the English envisions the negative possibility of a fall into doubt necessitating especially fervent prayer for women. The feminine is once again stigmatized as inferior in its difference.
The need for especially fervent prayer by nuns in the face of “mis-trouz” may also suggest, given the date of the translation, the translator’s misgivings about the nuns’ orthodoxy and their susceptibility (heightened, perhaps, by feminine physical and spiritual weakness) to heresy.62 As I discuss in the first chapter, at least some Benedictine nuns had significant access to works of vernacular theology. While high social status, combined with the status the nuns commanded as brides of Christ, likely did much to enable these textual privileges, some clerics did not ignore the problematic possibility that heresy—so strongly associated with vernacular reading—might raise its head in nunneries. Indeed, William Alnwick, while bishop of Norwich, found it necessary to organize a visitation of the Benedictine priory of Redlingfield, where the prioress was accused of Lollardy.63 As is so often the case, the vernacular simultaneously brings benefits and detriments to the nuns. Vernacular literacy and access to vernacular texts enable the nuns to expand their horizons beyond those delimited for them, but that same ability and access prompt clerical suspicion and, at least in some cases, increased supervision.
Brigittine Texts and the Power of the Feminine
The two English translations of the Benedictine Rule for women engage in diverse textual strategies to save the market for the preeminence of Latin in order to shore up clerical authority and the clergy’s privileged access to material and symbolic resources. As we shall see, though, the boundary-shifting power of translation is not so easily contained, and the negative associations of the vernacular with the feminine and the female body are not perfectly stable. The later medieval translations of the Benedictine Rule for women had a competing counterpart in vernacular Brigittine texts. These English versions of Brigittine texts, unlike the fifteenth-century Benedictine translations, do not present Latin as the preeminent language of authority in an attempt to save the market. Rather, they present women religious, as well as women in the world (with whom Brigittine texts were very popular), with opportunities to mobilize the feminine vernacular and the female body in the realm of religion.64 They thus enable women to capitalize on the power of the very differences deemed inferior in Benedictine texts.
Although the Benedictine tradition created for men has a conflicted history in shaping monastic life for women, Brigittine monasticism is founded “per mulieres primum et principaliter,”65 or, as The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure recounts Christ’s declaration of the rule to St. Birgitta, “This religion þerfore I wyll sette: ordeyne fyrst and principally by women to the worshippe of my most dere beloued modir. whose ordir and statutys I shall declare most fully with myn owne mowthe.”66 In the Brigittine Rule there is no question of requiring women to “translate” themselves in order to participate in religious life. In fact, in spite of some borrowing from Benedictine and Cistercian traditions, the Brigittine Rule “takes great pains to dissociate itself from existing monastic practice.”67
Just as the status of women is firmly established as positive and primary in the foundation of the Brigittine Rule, so is the status of the vernacular. The rule was revealed by Christ to St. Birgitta in her own mother tongue of Swedish, as was the text of the Brigittine lessons. The prologue of The Myroure of Oure Ladye, the English version of the Brigittine services, contains an account taken from the Reuelaciones extravagantes describing the way in which the Brigittine service and lessons came into existence. While St. Birgitta was in Rome, she pondered what lessons the nuns should read. She prayed, and Christ told her that he would send an angel who “shale reuele & endyte vnto the the legende”68 (hence the name Sermo angelicus given to the Brigittine lessons). Christ then commanded her, “write thou yt as he saith vnto the” (Myroure 18). Each day after saying her hours and prayers, she collected writing materials. On the days when the angel appeared to her he “endyted the sayde legende dystynctely and in order. in the moderly tongue of saynte Brygytte, and she full deuoutly wrote yt eche day of the Aungels mouthe” (Myroure 19).
After the angel has revealed all the lessons to her, he tells her that he has “shapen a cote to the quiene of heuen the mother of God” and directs Birgitta “sowe ye yt togyther as ye may” (Myroure 19). Here the vernacular, rather than being limited and inferior, is an avenue of direct communication with the divine. The image of a vernacular text as a garment for Mary, the Queen of Heaven and Mother of God, positively associates the vernacular with the feminine and the maternal. The mother tongue is not seen as lewd, debased feminine “cackling” but rather as glorious and of high value. The angelic command that Birgitta sew together the coat also conflates women’s vernacular textual work with stereotypically female textile work.69 The association demonstrates the ability of women and the vernacular to perform the most spiritually exalted work, and it serves as an empowering counterpart to Hoccleve’s dismissive command for women to leave off speaking of spiritual matters and “sitteth down and spynne.”70
The hours and hymns of the Brigittine offices, unlike the lessons, were revealed not to St. Birgitta herself but rather to St. Birgitta’s confessor “master Peter,” who “taught her grammer & songe, & gouerned her & her housholde” (Myroure 16). As a cleric and her confessor, Peter has authority over Birgitta; through his mastery of Latin, he has greater cultural and linguistic capital. In the account of the revelations he receives, however, the dynamics of power change. The revelations to Peter are situated in relation to female authority, and it is Birgitta who receives and passes on to Peter Mary’s divine authorization of the text he will bring forth. Mary stands in relation to his text as the figure of St. Benedict stands in relation to the prose translation of the Benedictine Rule. Indeed, it is Mary’s effort on Peter’s behalf that makes him worthy to receive the text. Mary tells Birgitta, “I haue furtheryd him so moche in to the charite of the same holy trinite, that he ys one of the pryestes that god loueth most in the worlde” (Myroure 16).
Even more dramatically, the assertion of clerical, paternal authority attempted by Arundel’s Constitutions is reversed in the Myroure.71 The text indicates that the revealed material needed to be translated into Latin for review and dissemination among “moo men of dyuerse contryes and language” (Myroure 20). The translation from the mother tongue to Latin is then divinely authorized through a woman when the angel tells Birgitta to take the legend to Peter “for to drawe yt in to latyn” (Myroure 20). Although translating the vernacular into Latin might initially threaten to recontain the mother tongue and feminine power, Latin actually serves to uphold the priority and authority of the vernacular. Rather than a vernacular translation of a Latin text receiving paternal legitimation through clerical authority, here a Latin translation of a vernacular text receives maternal authorization from Mary and Birgitta. Moreover, Mary reinforces the value of simple language and undercuts the universal values of Latin and clerical authority when, in talking about the texts revealed to Peter, she says, “For though
