mouthe of this my loued frende, plese me more, then sotel wordes of eny worldely maysters” (Myroure 17).
In Brigittine texts, feminine authorization of the mother tongue and the vernacular’s position of worthiness for the highest spiritual tasks correspond with the construction of female authority (modeled on Mary’s maternal authority) as equal to, or in some cases superior to, male clerical authority. The Brigittine Rule places the abbess as the head of the entire community of men and women; whereas in Benedictine monasticism the abbot represents Christ, here the abbess represents Mary, who, after Christ ascended into heaven, was head of the apostles and disciples.72 The alignment of the abbess and Mary gains further significance from the frequent portrayals of Mary as co-redemptrix in the Brigittine texts and from the simultaneous applications in Brigittine divine service of Scripture passages to Mary and Christ. For example, at the Sunday service of Tierce the explanation of the chapter “Et sic in Syon …” reads, “These wordes ar redde bothe of oure lorde Iesu cryste, and also of oure lady. for by her; we haue hym” (Myroure 147).73 The Brigittine focus on Mary as co-redemptrix combats women’s spiritual inferiority, their “translatedness.”
Whereas Benedictine monasticism in many respects sets up a system in which the resources most readily available to women are devalued and in which women are situated as lesser because of their differences from a masculine ideal, the Brigittine tradition allows women access to the full potential inherent in the model of womanChrist. In fact, the traits that mark women as lacking, and thus inferior and subordinate, in Benedictine monasticism empower women in the Brigittine tradition. While meekness is substituted for more “masculine” traits in the description of desirable qualities for a female superior in the verse translation of the Benedictine Rule, in the Brigittine Rule meekness and humility are the foundation for female authority. “The preeminence of the Abbess is, like that of the Virgin whose deputy she is, one of humility; hence her prelacy is defined as ‘onus humilitatis’ (Extrav. 21.4).”74 Brigittine texts wield the very terms of female spirituality that are used to subordinate women to clerical authority in the Benedictine translations to change systems of social relations in ways favorable to the status of women religious.
In spite of difficulties stemming from the generally subordinate role envisioned for men in the Brigittine order, the potentially disturbing power of the abbess,75 and the early fifteenth-century nervousness about women assuming powerful roles in religious life, The Rewyll of Seynt Sauioure (unlike the fifteenth-century translations of the Benedictine Rule) does not attempt to reduce the scope of female authority. The Middle English text directly follows the Latin, which reads, concerning the abbess’s authority, “Que ob reuerenciam beatissime Virginis Mariae, cui hic ordo dedicatus est, caput et domina esse debet, quia ipsa Virgo, cuius abbatissa gerit vicem in terris, ascendente Christo in celos caput et regina extitis apostolorum et discipulorum Christi.”76 The Middle English reads, “The abbes … for the reuerence of the most blessid virgyn marie to whomme this ordre ys halwyd. owith to be hedde and ladye. ffor þat virgyn whose stede the abbes beryth in eerth. cryst ascendynge in to heuyn. was hedde and qwene of the apostelis and disciples of cryst” (Rewyll fol. 56r-56v).
This close correspondence between the description of the abbess in the Latin and the Middle English is typical of the translation practices evident in the Brigittine Rule as Englished for Syon.77 An important aspect of the Brigittine preservation of female authority emerges in the contrast between the verse translation of the Benedictine Rule, in which textual knowledge for the abbot is changed into knowledge of proper conduct for the prioress, and the Middle English version of the Brigittine Rule, in which, as in Bishop Fox’s translation of the Benedictine Rule, learning is construed as fundamental to spiritual life for all nuns and especially for the abbess. At first the Brigittine Rule allows the nuns to have only books necessary for performing divine service, but it “immediately extends this permission to cover all books needed for study.”78 Ellis notes, “Religious, indeed, are to have these books not as they need, but rather as they want, them…. To make desire rather than need the term of one’s reading, therefore, is to set the very highest store by the getting of wisdom: to make true learning a quasi-sacramental act.”79 Mary is not only the foundation of the abbess’s authority but also the model of wisdom for the order.80 In the Brigittine order, the female wisdom embodied by Mary encompasses female learning and specifically textual knowledge.
The general absence of textual strategies to replace boundaries in the Middle English translation of the Brigittine Rule may partly be a result of the status of the Brigittine Rule itself. It was, necessarily under the terms of Lateran IV, actually accepted as constitutions to the Rule of St. Augustine rather than as an independent monastic rule. Anxieties about the status of the vernacular, and related anxieties about the status of female learning and women’s place in religious life, are not, however, entirely mitigated by the officially subordinate status of the Brigittine Rule. The translation practices evident in The Myroure of Oure Ladye do at times reveal the translator’s nervousness about the status of the feminine and the vernacular, anxieties consistent with a desire to save the market. This desire is at odds with, and perhaps even prompted by, the content of the Brigittine texts being translated.
Various candidates for authorship of the Myroure have been proposed. John Henry Blunt, who edited the Myroure, suggests Thomas Gascoigne (1403–58) of Merton College, Oxford, later vice-chancellor of Oxford, who was a lifelong devotee and scholar of St. Birgitta. A. Jeffries Collins finds Gascoigne an unlikely candidate since Gascoigne was not a professed member of the Brigittine Order and probably could not have acquired the “masterly knowledge of the Bridgettine rite and ceremonial displayed throughout the book” at Oxford.81 Collins suggests two possibilities—Thomas Fishbourne (d. 1428), the first confessor general at Syon, and Symon Wynter, Fishbourne’s contemporary in the order (d. 1448)—finding Fishbourne the more likely possibility.82 In any case, the Myroure was created by a cleric in the first half, and likely some time in the second quarter, of the fifteenth century, squarely in the period in which vernacular translation was such a vexed issue.
The Myroure, like the verse translation and Fox’s version of the Benedictine Rule, is specifically designated for women religious without knowledge of Latin in order that they “shulde haue sume maner of vnderstondynge of [their] seruyce” (Myroure 49). It is clear that the translator of the Myroure is concerned about the cultural status of the vernacular. Part II of the prologue ends with assurance that the translation of Scripture passages has been licensed by the bishop in accordance with Arundel’s Constitutions. The translator writes, “And for as moche as yt is forboden vnder payne of cursynge, that no man shulde haue be drawe eny texte of holy scrypture in to englysshe wythout lycense of the bysshop dyocesan. And in dyuerse places of youre seruyce ar suche textes of holy scrypture; therfore I asked & haue lysence of oure bysshop to drawe suche thinges in to englysshe to your gostly comforte and profyt” (Myroure 71). The translator, who has already recounted the divine authorization of the vernacular text’s translation into Latin through Mary and Birgitta, returns to episcopal authorization of translation of Latin into English. This movement works to reassert masculine control of the mother tongue and to recuperate ecclesiastical authority.
Leading up to the statement of license for translation is a complex negotiation of the relationship between Latin and English in the text of the Myroure, the general thrust of which is to reassert the primacy of Latin. The translator explains the physical layout of the translation, saying that the first word of each hymn, response, verse, etc. “is writen in latyn with Romeyne letter that ye may know therby where yt begynneth” (Myroure 70). These Latin lines do more than merely help the nuns keep their place. The Latin openings perform a function similar to that performed by the figure of St. Benedict or the Latin lines in the Benedictine translations; they remind the women of the preeminence of Latin over the vernacular, reinforcing simultaneously the inferiority inherent in the nuns’ inability to access the language of divine knowledge and their necessary dependence on clerical authorities.
