Books Under Suspicion is an enormously learned and important book that promises to decisively change the traditional story of religious censorship in pre-Reformation England. The story up to now has focused almost exclusively on Wycliffism, an emphasis which Kerby- Fulton trenchantly argues has made for the "lonely narrative" her book aims to correct, by "open[ing] some doors and windows in a room that has needed airing since the Reformation" (3). The version Kerby- Fulton substitutes is nuanced and complex. "The chronology of non- Wycliffite cases of heresy and related events in Post-Conquest England and Ireland with other relevant dates" at the start (xix-lii) provides a useful framework and guide for the intricate tale to be unfolded in subsequent chapters, as well as offering glimpses of the world many historians have hitherto chosen to ignore in their insistence on England's orthodoxy before Wyclif (evidence, for example, of Cathars in 1161-66; 1210 and 1230; of the "Pastoureaux" in 1251; of heretics immured or burnt in 1222 and 1279; and of the case of one Margaret Syward from Milton Keynes (Buckinghamshire, 1319) who had "hidden her face" so as not to see the elevation of the host). Kerby-Fulton's main interest, however, is not on such manifestations of popular heresy but rather on the learned debates that exercised the minds of intellectuals and visionaries, of monks, scholars, poets and civil servants. The Oxford of John Whethamstede, the circle of Langland, Chaucer and the Pearl poet, Julian's Norwich--all this is grist to Kerby-Fulton's mill.
Kerby-Fulton sets out her case in ten chapters. First comes an examination of those non-Lollard tracts that aroused suspicion throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth century. In every case it becomes clear that what is of concern are the dangers thought to be posed by revelatory writing, whether this be Joachite material, or, contrariwise, the writings of William of St Amour, or again the salvational history of Ockham. Strange bedfellows make up the list-- evidence already (according to Kerby-Fulton) that "the struggle for orthodox ground in the 1380s was no longer--if indeed it had ever been --simply a binary one" (43). In chapter 2 Kerby-Fulton looks more closely at the dissemination of Joachite (including Franciscan Joachite) material in England, of the roles here of Roger Bacon in Oxford and, some decades later, of a group of Franciscan lectors in Cambridge. Close examination of MSS containing works by (among others) Joachim and Henry of Costesy (one of the Cambridge Franciscan lectors) shows dramatic evidence of attempted censorship by the tearing out of pages. Such censorship notwithstanding Franciscans, aided and abetted in particular by the Austin Friars, continued their campaign to propagate radical Joachite ideologies; it is precisely against this background that Kerby-Fulton places for us both Chaucer and Langland. Chapter 3 turns to "the other side," to the role of Richard Kilvington, dean of St Paul's (1353-61) the careful owner of a copy of the extremely rare Anagni condemnation of Gerard's "Eternal Gospel" (Kilvington's name appears at the top of every odd-numbered page). Kilvington was a key figure not only in English but also in the European anti-mendicant circles, a profile that thus "shatters our modern sense of the English church as a parochial and insular world" (135). In chapter 4 Kerby-Fulton discusses Wyclif's distrust and dislike of anything he considered to be "outside the faith of scripture"; hence his skepticism towards the writings of Hildegard of Bingen, despite the seal of papal approval accorded to them and in contrast to the welcome they received in monastic circles. Chapter 5 looks further at attitudes towards visions and how paradoxically Wycliffism at least for a short while had itself conceded the value of revelation as a protection of intellectual freedom. Chapter 6, on Urban Devotion and Female Preaching, presents a new context in which to consider Margery Kempe and the likely influence on her Book of the sister houses of the Devotio Moderna. As she attended her parish church of St Margaret, Kempe would have had regular contact with ships travelling to and from the Low Countries where such houses flourished and her answers before the archbishop of York on her role as a public speaker suggest a careful awareness of her rights that may well have been influenced by continental models of precisely the kind the sisters of the New Devout would have provided. Chapter 7 looks at the Middle English glosses provided by the translator of Marguerite Porete's Mirror, at the audience for this text and at the way in which the translator both promotes Porete's spirituality while also warning against it, and hints at the possible influence this work may have had on the writings of Langland, Julian and the Pearl poet. Julian is further considered in chapter 8 where Kerby-Fulton argues that Julian's self-censorship in her long text reflects her determination to present herself as a practitioner of intellectual vision, even at the expense of her gender: ultimately, Julian has "bigger fish to fry" (316) than women's rights. Chapters 9 and 10 present the ideas of both Ockham and of Uthred de Boldon on salvation, and looks at the wide-spreading influence of their radicalism.
Such very brief pointers to the contents of chapters hopefully indicate the scope and range of this book. What they cannot do is adequately convey the depth and subtlety of the argument nor do more than hint at the exemplary scholarship that has gone into its making. This is a book to be read slowly and often. It will change the landscape of late medieval spirituality in England and provides a new, richer and more dangerous context for many of our best-loved authors.