in thyin herte: ‘I woot wel þou art not god, but ymaad aftir hym, to make men have þe moore mynde of hym after whom þou art ymagid.’”120 Although Visitation E is here immediately drawing on Visitation A, which is itself indebted to Baudri’s De visitacione infirmorum,121 it seems that in this milieu, even at the point of death, idolatry is a potentially dangerous breach of “Goddes lawe.”
So integral is Visitation E to these compilations, indeed, that one passage of the work is directly taken over by the prologue to the Wycliffite Ten Commandments in the version found in the large early fifteenth-century compilation, London, British Library Harley MS 2398:
[Visitation E; italicized passages from Visitation A] ffor every day a man neigheth his deeth neer and nee. ffor the moore a man in this lyf wexith [grows] in dayes and ȝeres, the moore he unwexith [diminishes]. For, as seyntes seyn: þe firste day in the whiche a man is born is þe firste day of his deth. ffor every day he is diynge while he is in this lyf. And therfore seith þe gospelle: “Awake, for þou wost never whiche hour god is to come” (Matthew 24:42), in thi ȝouthe or in thi myddel age or in thi laste dayes, or prevyliche [secretly] or openliche. And therfore loke þat þou be alwey redy! For it is semeliche [appropriate] þat þe servant abyde þe lord, and not the lord his servaunt. And nameliche whan greet haste is, he is worthi blame þat is unredy. But grettere haste no man redith of, than schalle be in þe comynge of Crist.
[Harley 2398: italicized passaged from Visitation E] For everych day a man neyȝep to his deþ, nere and nere. For þe more a man in his lyfe wexeþ in dayes & ȝeres, þe more he unwexeþ. For, as seyntes seggeþ: “þe furste day in þe weke þat a man is ybore is þe furste day of his deþ. For everyche day he is deyng whyle he is in þis lyf.” And þerfore seyþ þe Gospel: “Awake, for þou wost never whiche [h]oure God is to come”: whether in þy ȝonge age, other in þy myddel age, other in þy laste days; or pryveliche, other openlyche. And þerfore looke þou beo alwey bysy in his servys. And þenne, what tyme ever he come, þou mayst beo to hym redy. For it is semeliche þat servant abyde þe lorde, and nouȝt þe lord his servant. & namelyche, whanne gret hast ys, he is worþy blame þat is þenne unredy. Bot gretter hast no man redeþ of þan schal beo in comynge of Crist. And þus þou mayst wel y-knowe þat it is lytel ynow to kepe continuelliche Godes hestes to make a goed ende.122
Appropriately borrowed from the end of the first exhortation of Visitation E, where the speaker turns from the dying person to the attendants, with the words “and this is not oonliche to telle to syke men, but eke to hoole men,” in its new context this passage understands death preparation as a central part of the Christian life in a society directed by the Ten Commandments. Although no other copy of the Wycliffite Ten Commandments contains this prologue, its appearance here is again suggestive of how integral to reformist pastoral thought both Visitation E itself and the practice of sickbed visitation the work outlines in such detail had become.
Several of the books containing Visitation E offer insight as to the kind of audience that might be concerned to reflect on and practice the expanded spiritual role accorded to lay lords and householders, but it is again Harley 2398 that offers the most suggestive set of textual and social contexts for the work. The literate lay reader for whom Harley seems to have been produced is invoked in the incipit of its very first item, the pastoral and contemplative treatise Memoriale credencium: “Man and womman þat wilneþ [determines] to fle synne and lede clene lyfe, takeþ hede to þis litul tretys þat is y-write in englisch tong for lewed men þat konne not understonde latyne ne frenssche.”123 This same readership is addressed in all the dozen or more works that follow, which both confirm and complicate the program laid out in Memoriale credencium by focusing not only on the individual lay person’s “clen lyf” but on the role she or he can play in shaping the lives of others. As well as affective texts, including the Bridgetine Fifteen O’s and chapters on prayer and meditation from the lay manual Fervor Amoris (items 2 and 14), the book includes several expositions of catechetical items that, as often, provide material for religious instruction as well as learning (an exposition of the Ten Commandments and three of the Paternoster: items 3, 7, 10, 13). Besides Visitation E (item 8), it also includes a series of texts on the three estates, some of which lay out the duty to teach more directly: “Wimbledon’s Sermon,” a relatively conservative work in this regard, as we have seen (item 6); Of Wedded Men and Wyves and Here Children, with its instructions on household teaching (item 9); and, most interestingly, the Schort Reule of Lif and a work found only here, The Fyve Wyttes (items 15 and 4).124
It is important to bear in mind that the bulk of Harley treats the reader as the recipient of religious knowledge, not its teacher, instructing him or her (in the words of Memoriale credencium) how “a man shal lyve parfitlych and holylich” through faith, penance, the practice of the virtues, and “knowyng of hym self and knowyng of god almyȝty.”125 Nonetheless, although we do not know who first owned Harley 2398, its contents suggest that the book was also compiled in a conscious effort to delineate and develop the view of the pastoral duties of the privileged laity sketched in texts like How lordis and housbondemen schulden teche goddis commaundementis from Westminster 3, which teach their lay readers how to exercise “on sun maner a bischopes office,” of which participation in deathbed visitation forms an important part.126
The Schort Reule is much invested in a lord’s spiritual instruction of his household, including his “homli meyne” or domestic servants and even his “tenauntis.” Very much like How lordis and housbondemen schulden teche goddis commaundementis, it threatens the reader with damnation for failing to correct his servants—”For þou shalt be dampned for þer yvel [evil] lif and þin evel suffraunce [forbearance] but if þou amende it up þi myȝt [to the best of your power]”—and exhorts him to “chastise in good maner hem þat [those who] ben rebel aȝens Goddis hestis [commandments].” The lord’s duty to “meyntene [look after] truli up þi kunnyng and miȝt [to the extent of your skill and power] Goddis lawe and trewe prechouris” may still be the most important of his spiritual duties, in which ““if þou failist … þou forfetist [offend] aȝens God in al þi lordshipe in bodi and soule.” But it is only the most public and political among the many duties he is expected to perform.127
The importance ascribed to the visitation of the sick itself within this spiritual economy is most obviously affirmed by the appearance of Visitation E. But the prominent place played by deathbed visitation in the exercise of lay spiritual governance is also suggested in telling detail by The Fyve Wyttes, an important work (or portion of a work) that offers an extended and wide-ranging analysis of the proper uses, positive and negative, of each of the bodily senses.128 Like any treatise on the senses, the work is much preoccupied with governance of the body, which it understands as a “dwellyng-place” or “halle” with “fyve sotel [thin] wyndowes,” and which God both commands and counsels be appropriately ruled, its windows and gates opened or shut as will benefit the soul who lives within. Less usually for this genre, the work is also concerned with the reader’s governance of the communal body of his extended household, threatened as all its members equally are by spiritual death: “Deth haþ ascendyd by ȝoure wyndowes; it is entred into ȝoure houses for to dyspercle [destroy] þe lytel childeren of wiþoute and þe ȝongelynges [young men] of þe stretys (Jeremiah 9:21).”129 Indeed, the work continually shifts between its individual and its social registers, sometimes treating the reader as though his duties are all to himself, only to resituate him quickly within his actual position of difficult authority over others.
As a result of this double allegiance to the reader’s inner and public lives, The Fyve Wyttes offers particularly astute and well-balanced analyses of the standard moral topics of the genre, sometimes parting ways with more severe contemporary works on issues such as food, clothing, and minstrelsy in pursuit of a practical working model of the “mixed” lay life. Perhaps its most socially nuanced
