Spiritual Economies. Nancy Bradley Warren

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 in my songe there be no masterly makynge ne no Rhethoryke Latynne, yet thoo wordes endyted by the 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