The Middle English Revelation of Purgatory (RP), which recounts the visionary experience of an anonymous Winchester holy woman in 1422, attracted only limited scholarly attention in the twentieth century. [1] Modern readers may have been repelled by the text's visceral depiction of purgatorial violence (among other tortures, it features a woman's pets, turned devilish, punishing her in purgatory). [2] Barbara Newman recently suggested that the "real reason for the neglect of the text" is that "[a]nimal-loving medievalists...simply balk at a vision so austere that it castigates cherishing your cat or dog as the eighth deadly sin." [3] Newman seems to want to celebrate this female-authored text, but what about other readers prior to the appearance and use of the McAvoy edition? Did scholars tend to ignore the text because they wrongly regarded this purgatory vision, framed as a letter to the visionary's spiritual father, as a simplistic account of some disturbing dreams that a pious, powerless, and nameless woman once had? Perhaps she had them committed to writing and sent them to her spiritual father partly to clear her mind, and partly to attest to her spiritual gifts. Overturning such hypothetically negative and disparaging views of the text and, by implication, of its female author, Liz Herbert McAvoy's 2017 edition and facing-page translation of A Revelation of Purgatory makes this unique text come to life. Fortuitously framed by McAvoy's rich introduction and extensive bibliography, and supplied with insightful commentary, this short but intriguing text will be of interest not only to contemporary scholars working in the fields of gender and popular piety, but also to those wishing to learn more about early British women writers, lesser known works of Middle English literature, and human-animal relations in the later Middle Ages.
Marta Powell Harley earlier edited and translated the anonymous RP, specifically as it survived in the earliest of the two manuscripts containing the (virtually) complete text: Warminster, Longleat House, MS 29. [4] Harley's introduction usefully discussed the development of the doctrine of purgatory, earlier otherworld visions (some of which served as sources for RP), a few medieval women writers, and the best current hypotheses concerning the identities of the female author, the nun Margaret who appeared to her, and the clerics from whom suffrages were requested, plus information about the surviving three Middle English manuscripts and their affiliation. McAvoy's new edition and translation, based on Lincoln, Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 (one of two famous miscellanies compiled by Robert Thornton), updates previous scholarship on RP and approaches it with a decidedly feminist lens, thus making the work of greater interest to medievalists as well as general readers of the early twenty-first century. McAvoy argues for the value of studying RP alongside canonical authors like Julian of Norwich and Geoffrey Chaucer, considering that this text survives in devotional miscellanies containing better known texts like Chaucer's "Parson's Tale" and Walter Hilton's epistle "On the Mixed Life." She demonstrates that the anonymous author was well connected, and envisions her as operating within a network of devout and reformist-minded men and women, many of whom were prominent. Like Julian, who wrote for her fellow Christians, the anonymous author seems to direct her didactic visionary text to a wider audience.
Building upon the work of Mary C. Erler, [5] McAvoy holds that the anonymous female author was a recluse in Winchester and, in my view, seems reluctant to admit early on that this is not completely certain. Margaret, the revenant who visits the visionary on three successive nights, is said in the text to be a religious sister, whom scholars assume was a nun at Nunnaminster Abbey in Winchester. While Harley (and others) believed that the visionary was likewise a nun at that abbey, McAvoy, not discarding the possibility that the visionary might have been a nun there sometime earlier, thinks that when the vision occurred, she was living as a recluse elsewhere in Winchester, perhaps as an anchorite attached to the church of St. Lawrence. The visionary's geographic location is incontestable given that four of the clerics from whom Margaret asks masses and prayers have been identified as priests in Winchester around the time of the vision/letter. The remaining two clerics Margaret singled out for suffrages (one of whom had an important connection to Syon Abbey) were from Westminster. According to Erler, the Winchester visionary was the anchoress with whom Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, twice made contact. McAvoy takes things further, seeing the visionary's status as a recluse as most fitting, considering her assumed role as a mediator between a soul in purgatory and the Christian community to which it had belonged on earth, whose suffrages would speed her purgation. Such an authoritative female role--a holy woman enlisting men to do Margaret's "spiritual bidding" (26)--seems appropriate for a recluse, who like the esteemed anchoress Julian of Norwich offered spiritual counsel at her window. The very mode of life of a female recluse, one who occupies a liminal space between life and death, devoid of all creature comforts, except perhaps a cat, [6] makes her a fitting propagandist for the importance of Christian fellowship beyond the grave. The souls in purgatory are likewise devoid of all physical comfort and hover in a liminal space of becoming.
The fact that the explicit in Longleat MS 29 attributes the revelations to a "quaedam sancta mulier reclusa" bolsters this view of the author's identity, however, the incipit in the Lincoln Thornton manuscript attributes the vision more vaguely to "ane holy womane" (72). [7] Hypothetically, this could refer to a nun, a recluse or even a devout laywoman or widowed vowess. In her brief introduction to the excerpts from RP she anthologized, Alexandra Barratt regards the latter possibility as most consistent with the visionary's twice mentioning (76, 78) of a girl (likely a servant) being with her on the first night of the vision, as well as the visionary's movement: her visit of four local priests right after the first night of the vision and her proxy pilgrimage to the Marian shrine of Southwick (146) on behalf of Margaret (who made a vow to visit the shrine but whose death ostensibly prevented her from fulfilling it). [8] McAvoy does not see such realistic details as impediments, arguing that the girl would have been a servant to the Winchester recluse and that the latter could have made such short trips, just as she allegedly made a longer trip to London at Richard Beauchamp's expense.
The visionary's precise status aside, for McAvoy her femininity is crucial to her compassionate, Mary-like role in seeking to help Margaret get released from purgatory more quickly. Brilliantly emphasizing the text's brief allusion (140, 142) to an early and esoteric legend relating the Virgin's post-mortem tour of the places of punishment and her consequent desire to relieve the sufferings of sinners, if only for a periodic temporary reprieve (46-47) [9] (a fanciful account arguably linked with the popular late-medieval notion of Mary as the "empress of hell" [10])--McAvoy sees the Virgin Mary's assistance of Margaret's soul as paralleling the visionary's assistance of her friend. Further, McAvoy views the author as participating in the deeply compassionate purgatory piety practiced by many late-medieval holy women, who took the Virgin (and also the suffering Christ) as their model. But, in my view, the anonymous author hardly conveys her feelings toward the revenant Margaret, beyond her initial and lingering terror. Plus, we do not see the author suffering heroically and vicariously for Margaret, as for example Christina Mirabilis did for many souls. [11] Moreover, while it is undeniable that many late-medieval sources depict the Virgin Mary as a compassionate mother, who was highly concerned about the welfare of her spiritual children, Mary is not explicitly shown to help Margaret during the process of her purgation. Despite Mary being called the "empryce of helle and of purgatorye" in RP (150), a regal office which gives her the power to trounce demons in other sources, the poor nun Margaret is not suddenly rescued by Mary, but patiently endures the multistep process of punishment and purgation at the hands of pitiless demons. Repeatedly announcing that her specific sins have merited specific punishments, these devils employ gruesome instruments of torture as well as vile and voracious beasts.
Margaret calls out for "lady" Mary's help on two to three occasions, depending, as McAvoy notes, on whether one interprets the first ambiguous invocation as an appeal to the visionary herself or to Mary (98, 108, 128). When Margaret cries "so petously" in the final instance, the visionary, presumably moved by her expression of misery, as well as curious as to Margaret's rationale, asks her why she placed so much hope in the Virgin. Margaret explains that Mary is the "welle of mercy" and that "I solde the rathere be delyuerede thurgh hir bone and prayer," [12] adding that she fasted the Lady Fast during life, implying that Mary should reciprocate and aid her now that she is in purgatory (128, 130).
The Virgin indeed appears towards the end of the vision, once Margaret has progressed through three purgatorial fires. The soul of Margaret, now translucent white, seems ready to go to heaven, but she must first undergo a test and prove her worthiness of admittance. It is at this point that the Virgin appears with a young man (in my view probably St. Michael) holding the scales of psychostasis. [13] The devil, making a last-ditch effort to claim the soul as his own, pulls out a large worm and throws it onto one of the pans, implying that Margaret should still feel guilty and be considered liable for not having completed a pilgrimage. But the Virgin saves the day, not, I would note, by throwing her rosary onto the other pan, as she is wont to do in fifteenth-century English iconography, but by having the visionary herself, it seems, or at least one of her good deeds (a proxy pilgrimage) weigh down the other pan in Margaret's favor. As stressed by McAvoy, Mary literally draws the visionary into the climax of Margaret's drama of salvation. One gets the impression that both the Virgin, working behind the scenes, and the female visionary jointly facilitated Margaret's liberation: "Here es one that hase done it [the pilgrimage] for hir" (150).
I agree with McAvoy that the weighing scene creates a conflation between Mary and the visionary, a melding earlier set in motion by the ambiguous invocation "lady." Still, it is worth noting that in this penultimate scene Mary faithfully aids her devotee in a rather mechanical manner, even as she tells the devil that she and her son have granted Margaret mercy, triumphantly proclaiming: "fy one the, foule Sathanas!" But technically, in this assessment it is the good deed of the visionary (a bonus to her gift of prayers and masses) that made all the difference. This seems indicative of RP's emphasis on deeds rather than the emotional motives that impel them. So, while Mary is twice called the "well of mercy" (128, 150), I do not see feminine compassion as the main point of the text, crucial as it is. The emotion of fear, in contrast, seems more predominant, both that experienced by the visionary (74, 76, 80, 124, 132) and, through her revelation, what she (along with her likely clerical collaborator) expects her wider audience similarly to feel. Her (their) message seems to be Christians would do well to avoid the most severe and lengthiest penalties of purgatory, both by undertaking and completing penance on earth and also by making post-mortem purgatorial provision.
On the first night of the apparition, Margaret frightens the woman and actually threatens violence, so desperate is she for help. Significantly, the first portion of RP consists of a careful reiteration of Margaret's precise demands. The visionary, apparently aware of her role as a crucial lynchpin in the story of Margaret's salvation, dutifully fulfils her request for thirteen masses and certain prayers and is gratefully thanked by her friend the very next day, since Margaret supernaturally knows what had just been done for her. Thus, in my view, RP seems more concerned with properly executing Christian rituals believed to be of key value to the dead, than with feelings toward the souls in purgatory. As Eamon Duffy and others have pointed out, fifteenth-century English piety was intensely communal, practical, and quite optimistic. Helping to propel this system was the genre featuring "the revelation of secrets of the otherworld by a suffering spirit, who asks for Masses and prayers, and who reveals a specially privileged form of devotion." [14] Individuals who heard and/or transmitted such stories sought to shorten their almost inevitable purgatory sentence by enlisting the help of others whom they had left, or would eventually, leave behind. RP is undoubtedly an instance of such pastoralia, though it is certainly also a visionary text customized in wonderful ways by its unique female author's Marian-centered perspective and imagination.
In closing, I wish to point out a few problematic aspects of McAvoy's translation and transcription, which are otherwise extremely reliable. First, given the huge emphasis in numerous late-medieval pastoral texts on the gnawing pain of the worm of conscience (or synderesis) in both purgatory and hell, it is logical to expect RP to echo this teaching, which it does when Margaret testifies: "the worme of conscience...was the gretteste payne that was in purgatorye or in helle" (94, 96). Shortly thereafter she adds, when questioned how she can comment on the pains of hell without having experienced them: "by the ryghtewysnes of God and by resone of the saule wele I wote the worme of conscyence es the moste payne bothe here and there" (96, 98). McAvoy, helpfully pointing out that RP's treatment of the worm of conscience resonates with that in the Pèlerinage de l'âme (96, nn. 49, 51), suggests the latter be emended to "es the moste pryve [secret thing] bothe here and there," similar to the reading in the Longleat MS ("is most pryve both her and ther," Harley, p. 65). This would work if Margaret wishes to stress the interior, truth-telling faculty of synderesis. Yet since the focus of the preceding lines is on pain, which would encompass a remorseful conscience both here and in the afterlife (though admittedly what the ghost means by "here and there" is unclear), the emendation seems unnecessary. Second, when Margaret advises, on the third night, that saying the Latin hymn Veni creator spiritus (a 28-line-long hymn used for Vespers and Terce on Pentecost and throughout the octave of the feast) [15] will unfailingly assist a person struggling with temptation, she seems to have in mind people who are literate: "Euer-ylk mane and womane that were lettirde…" Hence, "lettirde" should be translated as "lettered," not "hindered" (146-147). Third, the visionary's account of the sins and punishments of single people includes a quotation of the devils' mockery of them: "Take 3owe thiese paynes for 3e disussede 3our-selfe in the foule luste of lecherye and in alle other synnes...with-owttene any nede, when 3e my3t haue takene the fredome of wedlayke" (126). While I would agree with McAvoy that the author likely has in mind "self-abuse" (127), the devils speak of a variety of sexual (and other) sins on the part of single people. (Indeed, a little further on, men are specifically blamed for fornicating with women in order to avoid marriage and its attendant risk of wifely infidelity, criticized here as male paranoia). Hence, it might be better to interpret the above passage more inclusively, translating it as: "Take you these pains since you misused your genitals (or simply "indulged yourselves") in the foul lust of lechery and in all other sins…." The striking phrase "fredome of wedlayke" that follows shortly thereafter seems to refer to the rights of marriage, [16] that is, the legitimate use of one's genitals within marriage, an idea that Chaucer's Wife of Bath certainly champions. "Bet is to be wedded than to brynne," she argues negatively, while also boldly embracing "the actes and...fruyt of mariage." [17]
In early scholarship, one of the reasons RP had garnered some attention was because it offered an interesting parallel to the Chaucer's Prioress who, like Margaret, seems to have an inordinate affection for her "smale houndes" (82, n. 21). But as the aforementioned passage concerning sexuality, as well as other aspects of the purgatory vision highlighted in McAvoy's new edition (e.g., its stress on the need for clerical reform) indicate, the RP certainly engages in a lively dialogue with many contemporary texts and issues. Hence the value of this new and thought-provoking edition, which will make this fascinating female-authored text, one hopes, more well-known and carefully studied by twenty-first scholars and students alike.
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Notes:
1. An edition appeared in 1895 in C. Horstmann, ed. Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle and His Followers, new preface by Anne Clark Bartlett, 2 vols. in 1 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 1.383-392.
2. In her survey of the reception history of RP, McAvoy mentions how early scholars were turned off by its horror, p. 5. On the use of the word "pet" to speak of companion animals in the Middle Ages, see Karl Steel, How Not To Make A Human: Pets, Feral Children, Worms, Sky Burial, Oysters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2019), 20.
3. An unpublished paper delivered at the 2018 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, "The Monk, the Plowman, and the Nun's Priests: The Social Matrix of Two English Otherworld Visions," which Prof. Newman kindly provided me. Although I share her dismay at seeing a love of pets condemned so harshly, I think it is worth keeping in mind the historical context. Jacobus de Voragine, for example, explained that "carnal affections" for things or people would cause someone to end up in purgatory, as long as they are not placed "above God" (which would presumably land someone in hell). From this perspective, Margaret can be thought to have gotten off easily considering she treated her "little dog and little cat" as "idols" (81, 83, 133), though this is presumably an exaggeration; The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, translated by William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 2.282. Cf. the ambiguous tale of the cat-loving hermit found in the Legenda aurea and elsewhere; Steel, How Not to Make A Human, 18-21.
4. A Revelation of Purgatory by an Unknown Fifteenth-Century Woman Visionary: Introduction, Critical Text, and Translation, Studies in Women and Religion, 18 (Lewiston/Queenston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1985).
5. Most recently Erler discusses the historical personages involved in "A Revelation of Purgatory," in The History of British Women's Writing, 700-1500, edited by Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt, The History of British Women's Writing (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2015), 1.241-249.
6. Bella Millet, ed., Ancrene Wisse: A Corrected Edition of the Text in Corpus Christi College, ms 402, with Variants from Other Manuscripts, 2 vols., EETS o.s. 325 & 326 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005/2006), 157, 283. As both Millet and McAvoy point out, Goscelin of St Bertin dissuades his female recluse reader from keeping cats and other animals, having more clearly pets in mind, since he warns that such companion animals will waste "your fleeting time (tua...tempora auolantia)." On the notion of frivolous creatures distracting a nun or other consecrated religious from their contemplative duties and possibly also works of charity toward the poor, see Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014), 67-72. As she explains, cats were condoned as useful mousers within religious institutions and bishops often permitted nuns to keep a dog or even dogs, as long as they were not too numerous. The 1522 Visitation of Norwich indicates that a prioress was allowed to keep one dog "that she preferred (quem maluerit)," while being required to get rid of the rest;Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, 1492-1532, edited by A. Jessopp (Westminster: Camden Society, 1888), 191.
7. As McAvoy notes, RP in the Lincoln Thornton manuscript is missing a middle section describing the punishment of lecherous priests and of other sinful religious, both male and female. A fragment of RP survives in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Eng. th. c. 58, and a peculiar fragment of the prayer instruction portion of the text, in Latin, survives in Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS Lat. 228.
8. Women's Writing in Middle English, 2nd edn (Harlow: Longman, 2010), 162. On the obligatory nature of pilgrimage vows, see Diana Webb, Medieval European Pilgrimage, c.700-c.1500 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2002), 56-57.
9. As McAvoy notes, the short sentence that alludes to the Apocalypse of the Virgin does not appear in the Longleat manuscript (142, n. 106).
10. Catherine Oakes, Ora Pro Nobis: The Virgin Mary as Intercessor in Medieval Art and Devotion (London/Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2008), 167-199.
11. Christina was revived from the dead after having seen "wretched souls" inhabiting a "dark and terrible spot." Henceforth she desired to suffer on earth "to deliver all those souls on whom [she] had compassion in that place of purgatory," and to turn humans away from sin; Thomas of Cantimpré: The Collected Saints' Lives: Abbot John of Cantimpré, Christina the Astonishing, Margaret of Ypres, and Lutgard of Aywières, translated by Margot King and Barbara Newman(Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 131.
12. While McAvoy interprets this as an expression of Margaret's preference to be released from purgatory by Mary, I think a better translation of "I solde the rathere" would be "I should sooner," given that Margaret, like most fifteenth-century English Christians, desires to spend as little time in Purgatory as possible.
13. Oakes, Ora Pro Nobis, 129-166. Though Mary in RP addresses the young man holding the scale once as "Sone" (149), I suspect she says this in a matronly way.
14. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400-c. 1580, 2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 338-376, especially 372.
15. Matthew Britt, The Hymns of the Breviary and Missal (New York: Benzinger Brothers, 1922), 162-164. In the fifth stanza the Holy Spirit is asked to "drive far away our deadly foe."
16. See the note on "freedom of wedloke," appended to the online Middle English Dictionary entry for "fredom n.," which rephrases the sense of the expression in RP as "the privilege of sexual relationships within the framework of marriage." (accessed 11 June 2020).
17. The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson, new foreword by Christopher Cannon, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), III.52, 114, pp. 105-106.