Rhetorics of Pain and Desire: The Writings of the Middle English Mystics Marisa A. Klages Dissertation submitted to the College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Lara Farina, Ph.D., Chair Patrick Conner, Ph.D. Jonathan Burton, Ph.D. Kellie Robertson, Ph.D. Kate Ryan, Ph.D. Department of English Morgantown, West Virginia 20085 Keywords: Mysticism, Embodiment, Pain, Desire Copyright 20085Marisa A. Klages  ABSTRACT Rhetorics of Pain and Desire: The Writings of the Middle English Mystics Marisa A. Klages This dissertation, “Rhetorics of Pain and Desire: The Writings of the Middle English Mystics,” seeks to explore the connections between desire and pain in the writings of Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton. All four writers develop a rhetoric that allows them to use pain and/or desire as a catalyst through which their writing becomes embodied. This embodied rhetoric serves the purpose of achieving union with God, while instructing others in the art of fusing the body, pain and desire into the ultimate conduit for divine contemplation. In each chapter, the development of each writer’s authority is explored through the ways they establish their bodies through pain, desire, and instruction. Chapter 1, investigtates Richard Rolle’s use of the vernacular to gain authority, his position as a teaching hermit, and his anxiety over his own masculinity. Chapter 2 explores Julian of Norwich’s self-inscription as a strategy to transmit her theological position. Chapter 3 focuses on Margery Kempes body as a method of exchange within a culture that repeatedly tried to silence her. Chapter 4 discusses the conservative mysticism of Walter Hilton. Each of these mystics uses pain and desire to construct a spiritual and divine understanding of his or her body; the body becomes the text written by the Divine. Implicit in their understanding and contemplation of the Divine, born of the yoking of pain and desire, is a received authority to train others in achieving this pathway to attain contemplative union with the Divine. What becomes most important, then, is not simply the achievement of divine union through contemplation, but the ability to educate others so that they may be brought to this same level of spiritual union.  iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been completed without the guidance of my Dissertation Director, Dr. Lara A. Farina and the careful readings and questioning of my committee: Drs. Patrick Conner, Jonathan Burton, Kate Ryan and Kellie Robertson. I am grateful for the assistance and provocation of thought they all provided for me throughout this process. To all my colleagues at LaGuardia Community College, I offer my thanks as they supported me throughout this project; most especially, though, thanks goes to Dr. J. Elizabeth Clark whose friendship, critical eye and excellent knowledge aided me in my writing. Outside of the academic realm, my parents, Dennis Klages and Joanne Guarino Klages, my grandmothers, Mary Guarino and Ceil Klages and my sister Meghan Klages have encouraged me with kindness, humor, and a gentle shove now and again. A final thank you to my partner in everything, Mitch Bombich, who is unfailing in support and love.  iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: THE TRIPARTITE PRACTICE OF AFFECTIVE PIETY: PAIN, DESIRE, AND INSTRUCTION ................................................................................................................................................. 37 CHAPTER 2: THE PUNISHMENT MACHINE: THE RHETORICAL AUTHORITY OF PAIN AND DIVINE CONSUMPTION IN JULIAN OF NORWICH ................................................................. 80 CHAPTER 3: MARGERY KEMPE: CORPOREAL COMMODITY: DESIRE, PAIN, AND SUBVERSIVE SUFFERING......................................................................................................................... 121 CHAPTER 4: WALTER HILTON: MINDING THE BODY: CONSERVATIVE PAIN AND DESIRE............................................................................................................................................................. 158 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................................ 196 WORKS CITED .............................................................................................................................................. 196  1 Introduction This dissertation “Rhetorics of Pain and Desire: The Writings of the Middle English Mystics,” seeks to explore the connections between desire and pain in the writings of Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton. All four writers develop a rhetoric that allows them to use pain and/or desire as a catalyst through which their writing becomes embodied. In this project, I am concerned with the ways these four contemplatives forge an embodied rhetoric that allows them to achieve union with God, while instructing others in the art of fusing the body, pain and desire into the ultimate conduit for divine contemplation. Each of these mystics uses pain and desire to construct a spiritual and divine understanding of his or her body; the body becomes the text written by the Divine. Implicit in their understanding and contemplation of the Divine, borne of the yoking of pain and desire, is a received authority to train others in achieving this pathway to attain contemplative union with the Divine. What becomes most important, then, is not simply the achievement of divine union through contemplation, but the ability to educate others so that they may be brought to this same level of spiritual union. I. Textual Evidence Generally speaking, I am studying four of the five mystics often grouped together under the heading of fourteenth century mystics.1 I have made a conscious choice to omit 1 Grouped together in Marion Glasscoe, English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith (London: Longman, 1993); Barry Windeatt, English Mystics of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge UP); Nicholas Watson, “The Middle English Mystics,” The Cambridge History of Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002) 539-565. George Kaiser,“The Mystics and Early English Printers: The Economics of Devotionalism,” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1987), and S.S. Hussey, “The Audience for Middle English Mystics,” De Cella in Seculum:  2 the work, The Cloud of Unknowing from this study. The Cloud is of anonymous authorship and since the argument I make in this project is entailed heavily on the identity of the writers, I believe that omitting this text is appropriate. Moreover, the Cloud author, while he guides his reader to understand contemplation and the use of contemplation does not instruct his readers in basic contemplation –instead, his work is “addressed to a particular twenty-four year old disciple, a solitary who is on the threshold of unitive prayer, and its teaching is intended solely for those ‘in the socereinnest pointe of contemplatife levein’ (p. 69; also ch. 74)” (Windeatt 68). The other writers in this study, Rolle, Julian, Margery, and Hilton all offer some level of basic instruction to their readers about the steps needed to achieve contemplation. Additionally, the disciple of the Cloud author is a young man, thus while Hilton and Rolle are addressing women at the outset of a contemplative life, the Cloud author’s reader would ostensibly be more experienced and male. What follows is an explanation of the texts chosen by the four Middle English mystics in this study in order to provide brief context of the works that will be used in this dissertation. Richard Rolle Exploring the wide variety of writing that is available in English from Richard Rolle, this dissertation focuses on a number of his shorter works as well as two of his longer texts, one written in English and one composed in Latin and translated into English in 1434. Of Rolle’s shorter works, I study The Commandment, Desire and Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk:D.S. Brewer, 1989)  3 Delight, Meditations A and B, and Ego Dormio.2 These five texts offer a wide breadth in describing how Rolle uses pain and desire to formulate his own body and his understanding of how and where pain is appropriate. The Form of Living and Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love),3 in addition to the aforementioned texts, are more instructional than contemplative in tone and meld desire and pain with instruction for his readers. The Fire of Love is useful in its own right as the exploration of Rolle’s understanding of contemplation. It is also useful because it is a precursor to Julian of Nowich’s Book of Showings. Rolle’s Form of Living was specifically written for Margaret Kirkby, who adopted an anchoritic lifestyle. This text provides readers with insight into how women who chose an anchoritic lifestyle were rhetorically guided to their vocation by men. Julian of Norwich Julian of Norwich’s A Revelation of Love4 is one of the earliest vernacular religious texts by a woman. Her text, available in a short version written immediately after she received her visions, and a long version written about 20 years after her revelations, serves to offer a voice to women’s contemplation. Because the long text 2 All quotations from Richard Rolle’s English texts, including The Form of Living from Richard Rolle, Prose and Verse. Ed. S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson, (Oxford: Oxford UP for the Early English Text Society, 1988.) 3 All quotations from Incendium Amoris from The Fire of Love, and the Mending of Life, or The Rule of Living. Trans. Richard Misyn. Ed. Ralph Harvey. (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner for the Early English Text Society, 1896.) 4 There are three viable editions of Julian’s text. Two “student” versions: one, Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love. Rev. Ed. Ed. Marion Glassoce, (Exeter: U of Exeter P, 1993); the other The Shewings of Julian of Norwich. Ed. Georgia Ronan Crampton. (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994). Additionally there is a new version edited by Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins. Watson and Jenkins write that their edition not only “take[s] hundreds of reading from manuscripts other than the base manuscript” (x), thus, I have chosen to use their edition of the work. Although the manuscript of the text they edit is a late manuscript, they acknowledge this limitation and note that their “eclectic” edition has the advantage of producing a “clearer, more consistent text” (30). All quotations of Julian of Norwich are from Nicholas Watson and Jacqueline Jenkins, The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love” (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2005) 121-382.  4 demonstrates a text that has fully developed over a period of about 20 years and has likely been influenced by the tumultuous years between her initial short text and the later long text it is the one consulted in this dissertation. This text offers readers a way to interrogate the creation of a woman’s voice in vernacular mysticism and helps readers understand the role of the body for a woman mystical writer. Margery Kempe Also important for this project, The Book of Margery Kempe5 deals very directly with one woman’s experience and the bodily effects of her experience. Kempe’s claim of a connection to Christ affords her the advantage of speaking her mind in very non- traditional ways. Her text offers readers many avenues from which to explore both the rhetorical positioning of the self and body politics. While I recognize the importance of exploring both Julian and Margery through their mystical experiences, it is equally important for readers to focus more analytically on their language. By examing closely and carefully the language that is used in these mystical texts, modern readers are able to better understand the ways that language functions within women’s mystical writing. This provides readers an understanding of the way that women’s mystical writing might have been transgressive. Walter Hilton Finally, Walter Hilton’s The Scale of Perfection is a text that is critical in establishing a record of the religious tradition that encouraged the growth of mysticism.6 5 All quotations from The Book of Margery Kempe EETS o.s. 212. Ed. Sanford Brown Meech. (Oxford: Oxford UP for the Early English Text Society, 1940.) 6 I use the edition from the TEAMS series edited by Thomas Bestul even though it “represents a coherent text from a well-written manuscript as produced by a scribe (or scribes), with emendations made only to  5 The Scale of Perfection offers readers contemplative literature written by a man who is less wedded to the body than Rolle. Moreover, this text, along with Rolle’s The Fire of Love, engages readers in how these religious men viewed their bodies and how their perception of their bodies are used as tools to achieve contemplation and to instruct their female students. For Hilton, the regulation of the body, specifically of a woman’s body, is instructive for contemplation to his inteded reader. Additionally, through this bodily regulation, Hilton offers some insight into his more conservative stance in the late fourteenth century. II. Review of Literature Mysticism and Gender A historical linkage among pain, body, and spirituality in medieval texts is often made through writings about Christ’s body. To this end, a number of well-written contemporary studies of the medieval relationship to Christ’s body exist. The most conclusive of these remain Sarah Beckwith’s Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture, and Society in Late Medieval Writing and Carolyn Walker Bynum’s collection Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. Both of these texts establish the clear relationship between medieval religious practice and an understanding of a “human” suffering Christ. Bynum-Walker offers an explanation of the body by locating differences in terms of male/female bodies and male and female mysticism. She writes: “In short, women’s bodies were more apt than men’s to display unusual changes, closures, openings or correct obvious mistakes or when necessary to preserve the sense” (8). Although multiple authors reference a forthcoming edition of The Scale of Perfection by EETS, there has not been one published yet and the EETS website contains no notice of it as a forthcoming publication. Note that Bestul was anticipating its publication in 2000, eight years ago- thus, this may attest to the complexities of the extant manuscripts of The Scale.  6 exudings; [. . .] religious significance was attached to such changes when they seemed to parallel either events in Christ’s life or in the mass” (187-188). These are the kinds of experiences that are relevant for my readings of Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Another kind of bodily experience-- illness, or recurrent pain--was also more apt to be given religious significance in women’s lives than in men’s (188), again clearly evident in Julian and Margery’s writing. The understanding of the difference in conceptions of the male and female body within the Christian context of the Middle Ages is a cornerstone of gaining a sense of how these bodies functioned with the spiritual realm. The bodies of these four Middle English writers served as inscriptive spaces, where their visions, or their understandings of their visions, were marked on them. The gendered bodies -- male and female -- were often written upon. Thus, to better understand the four mystics in this study, it is essential to understand their gendered bodies. In Christ’s Body, Beckwith analyzes “the image of Christ as physical, suffering and embodied,” (1) very similarly to the way this dissertation hopes to examine the bodies of the mystic. Of mystic texts, Beckwith writes: They derive their authority, their claim to speak, by claiming originary force: that they are a transcription of the voice of God Himself. Yet because they add to that voice, because they supplement it, they also subtly suggest that it may not be the last word that it must claim to be. (20) In perceiving the writing of a mystic as a supplemental voice of God, then we can begin to question how the body as text further supplements that voice. A major contribution of Beckwith’s text is her use of cultural criticism to examine “literary, political, and cultural performances of Christ’s body in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century England” (Copeland  7 126). Beckwith also provides a significant reading of Kempe’s text that focuses on the public and private aspects of Kempe’s life. Here I turn to Michel de Certeau because of the fruitful ways he brings body and language together. He writes: In place of the divine word (which also had a physical nature and value), the loved body (which is no less spiritual and symbolic, in erotic practice) is substituted. But the adored body is as elusive as the vanishing God. It haunts writing which sings its loss without being able to accept it- a process that is itself erotic. (4) Certeau becomes a foundational theorist in thinking about mysticism in ways connected to both the word and the body. Although the primary texts that he studies are largely rooted in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, he of course relies on the medieval mystical tradition to foreground his argument. Of mystic literature he writes: [It] has all the traits of what it both opposes and posits: it is the trial, by language, of the ambiguous passage from presence to absence. It bears witness to the slow transformation of the religious setting into an amorous one, or of faith into eroticism. It tells how a body “touched” by desire and engraved, wounded written by the other, replaced the revelatory, didactic word. (5) The language of the mystic, engraved upon the body in multiple, complex ways creates a map through which the writer is able to instruct and create his or her own rhetoric of pain and desire.  8 Given the frequent identification within texts of an individuals connection to Christ’s physicality, the connection between spirituality and pain is not surprising in medieval writing. What becomes interesting about medieval devotional literature is that as the connection between pain and spirituality evolves, it seems to suggest that desire is a driving force that produces pain and thus encourages a deep spiritual connection with a human Christ in the medieval mystical experience. As Nicholas Watson points out in “The Middle English Mystics,” “the academic study of mystical theology has never been definitively detached from its practice” (541); yet, we can not entirely dislocate mystical theology from mystical practice. The practice of mysticism frequently manifests itself in bodily ways that lead readers to hearken back to certain aspects of medieval theology such as the imago dei. As Watson says, “mystics scholarship has never adequately distinguished itself from religious practice, the field’s priorities tend to be devotional, not historical; indeed, it tends to assume, like mystical theology itself, that mystical experience is a transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon” (543). Many of the studies on mysticism are tightly connected to the religious culture of the mystics without necessarily connecting the religious practices to the bodily ones; this dissertation seeks to attempt to bridge this gap by addressing both religious practice and the body. In the past decade, many studies have emerged regarding gender and mysticism. This project does not seek to contribute much more to this particular focus, as a number of excellent works that specifically speak to the medieval understanding of gender and how and why mystics were frequently female already exists. These studies are useful in their own right because they effectively establish the importance of earlier feminist  9 critiques of this period. Grace Jantzen’s Power, Gender and Mysticism focuses on the ways that women mystics used mysticism to help them gain authority. Thus, Jantzen posits that the acceptance of mysticism in the medieval church was greatly important in creating a voice for women. Works like Jantzen’s are a starting point for understanding how writing in a mystical genre provided women with a voice that they may not have otherwise had. As Cate Gunn explains: The position of women was always more marginal, and so more difficult to define, than that of men, and those women who could not claim membership of an established religious order-notably anchoreses and beguines-were partiularly marginal and vulnerable, although some derived strength and independence from this very marginality. (40). The strength that women could find as independent from religious orders is quite evident in Margery and Julian’s writing. Ulrike Wiethaus, editor of Maps of Flesh and Light, gathers essays that reinforce the contemporary idea that medieval women were “active shapers of their lives who refused [such] stereotypes and refused to succumb to them not without resistance” (1). The essays in this collection generally establish women’s relationships to their bodies. The two most relevant texts in this collection are Laurie Finke’s “Mystical Bodies and the Dialogics of Vision” and “She Wept and Cried Right Loud for Sorrow and for Pain” by Ellen Ross. Finke attempts to establish medieval mysticism as a discourse that “exhibits at least some women’s ability to speak and be heard within a patriarchal and forthrightly misogynistic society” (29). While Finke’s article was useful when it was written in 1993, we have since moved past a stage in feminist medieval scholarship where we can only  10 concern ourselves with language as it pertains to women in a patriarchal society. Ross deals more with concerns of the body, aiding to help interpret how mystics, specifically Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, used their bodies and pain for a “spiritual process of renewal.” But, again, Ross’ focus on mystical experience is not an examination of the ways in which language and the body have melded together in this genre of writing, which this dissertation considers. Recently, Liz Herbert McAvoy contributed to this field in her text Authority and the Female Body in the Writing of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. In this work she posits that: Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, each contravened her own allocated spaces and reached out through the boundaries with her body and voice to enter the proscribed spaces beyond. … [and] the texts produced by these women testify to the contravention of such boundaries and serve to redefine acceptable female spaces by means of a redrawing of the maps of female bodies, voices, and agency. (2-3) Through McAvoy’s examination of female bodies in essentialist ways –she, for example, looks at motherhood, sexuality, and public voice-- she is able to discover “a redefinition and redeployment of the female body to effect its successful transformation into articulate and effective validatory hermenutic” (236). What McAvoy fails to do in her study is consider how pain works to add to the voice and the language and rhetoric that these female writers create. This dissertation will consider how pain and desire strengthans the voice of these female writers. Pain and Desire  11 Historical and cultural constructions of pain and desire are important when examining medieval rhetorical processes to understand how the writing of the mystics either fits into these models or moves away from them. These texts fall into multiple categories. First, there are texts that deal specifically with the cultural and historical construction of pain in the Western world. In this area, Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain is a foundational text that outlines the way the West perceives pain and the effects of pain on the body. The Body in Pain attempts to thoroughly explain the way that pain is constructed in society. This text is also helpful in creating a foundation from which to work in my own explorations of pain and desire. While Scarry’s text is inherently useful in contextualizing and understanding the effects and uses of pain in the West, she makes no connections to how desire or religion may work with pain. Understanding pain through Scarry’s lens removes pain from a merely physical realm. Instead, through Scarry, pain becomes a range of physical and psychological understanding. It is, indeed, as she subtitles her book, “The Making and Unmaking of the World.” Scarry writes: The work of creation, which always has at its center the work of rescue, has broken down. As the solution to the deconstruction of creation in the scenes of wounding is material artifice- the materialization, or the embodying, or the humanization of the principle of creating so that the double consequence of projection and reciprocation will be once more intact. (276) Pain is a physical, psychological, metaphysical discourse. As bodies are faced with variations of distress, they are forced to again and again find ways to exist. In the writings of the Middle English mystics in this study, we find that they are repeatedly  12 challenged in their existence and that it is through their bodies, frequently in pain, that they are able to “substantiate and perpetuate” (Scarry 276) their existence. Conversely, Scarry is also useful because she helps readers understand how the body (and the world) are frequently constructed through pain, hence her subtitle “the Making and Unmaking of the World.” Scarry states: All intentional states—physical, emotional, mental—take intentional objects: the more completely the object expresses and fulfills (objectifies) the state, the more it permits a self-transformation out of that embodied state; conversely, the more the state is deprived of an adequate object, the more it approaches the condition of physical pain (261) While this quotation does not link pain to desire, it does offer readers a way to think about how pain may have affected the mystics. The mystic desire to experience union with God was a desire that often remained unfulfilled for extended periods causing the mystic emotional/mental anguish. This deprivation may cause the mystic to approach physical pain, as Scarry posits; lack of fulfillment of the desire causes the mystic to seek physical pain. Indeed, this idea of seeking pain also appears evident in The Problem of Pain, as C.S. Lewis writes “The full acting out of the self’s surrender to God therefore demands pain: this action, to be perfect, must be done from the pure will to obey, in the absence, or in the teeth, of inclination” (87). For Lewis, the desire to surrender the self, to meet God-was achieved by some sort of interaction with pain.7 Additionally useful is Scarry’s reasoning that bodily pain produced by torture is a physical act and that to 7 Lewis also notes that “Ascetic practices, which in themselves strengthen the will, are only useful in so far as they enable the will to puts its own house (the passions) in order, as a preparation for offering the whole man to God” (100).  13 physically inflict pain is similar to the action of a verbal investigation. This allows readers to think about medieval mysticism and language in cases where mystics’ bodies are bent to pain by the observance or questioning of church authorities. Kempe’s text, for example, addresses this. A medical definition of pain is that it is an unpleasant sensation related to tissue damage, and while pain is almost an indefinable sensation, it is certainly a universal one. It is, as Elaine Scarry writes, an “unshareable” feeling- it is in our midst at once as that which cannot be denied and that which cannot be confirmed” (4). It is something that, for all our knowledge of diseases and cures, is still ill articulated in our modern world. What we do know, is that when someone in our contemporary world is in pain, the expectation is that we alleviate her pain as quickly as possible. The best way that modern medicine has come up with to identify varying levels of pain intensity is by offering patients a chart, typically on a scale of 1-10, and adjectives to describe what the pain feels like.8 Patients are then forced to identify their own pain level and then treated accordingly. Pain varies from person to person. What one patient might define as a 5, or, moderate pain, another patient might see as a 3 or a 7. Yet, because the contemporary medical establishment does not always believe the patient’s voice, it has therefore forced the patient to code pain in words that are already part of our vocabulary.9 In other words, someone today might describe pain in a broken ankle as “burning” or “hot,” but this 8 A large variety of pain scales exist. Among them are: The McGill Pain Questionnaire, and the Brief Pain Inventory. See R. Melzack. "The McGill Pain Questionnaire: major properties and scoring methods".Pain 1 (1975): 277–99 See C.S. Cleeland and K.M. Ryan "Pain assessment: global use of the Brief Pain Inventory". Ann. Acad. Med. Singap. 23 (1994): 129–38. 9 See M.Tamburini, S. Selmi, F. De Conno, and V. Ventafridda .“Semantic Descriptors of Pain” Pain 29.2 (1987) 187-193. R.A. Moore and S.F. Dworkin. “Ethnographic Methodologic Assessment of Pain Perceptions by Verbal Descriptions” Pain 34.2 (1988): 195-204. Also see, F. Leavitt. “Pain and Deception: Use of Verbal Pain Measurement as a Diagnostic Aid in Differentiating Between Clinical and Simulated Low Back Pain.” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 29 (1985): 495-505.  14 might not actually tell the medical personnel anything about the condition of the patient. This forced coding of pain often causes dissonance between what the individual is experiencing in his or her body and how this is going to get expressed to those who can help him or her. Scarry couches this in her discussion of torture, stating that torture makes emphatic the ever present, but except in the extremity of sickness and death, only latent distinction between a self and a body, between a ‘me’ and ‘my body.’ The self or ‘me’ that is experienced on the one hand as more private, more essentially at the center, and on the other hand as participating across the bridge of the body in the world, is ‘embodied’ in the voice, in language (48-49). According to Scarry, there always exists the division of “me and my body,” but these distinctions between the higher and lower levels of selfhood are not necessarily prevalent until the body is under duress. Once under duress, the body undergoes a shift in signification from “this is my body”- the physical to “this is me”-the spiritual. The difference that exists between these locations of the self is vast. For Scarry, it seems that the physical self is inarticulate and can only become embodied through the voice that pain or torture gives it; thus, pain is coded within the existing linguistic structures of a society. I am not suggesting that we conflate the pain of mystical experience with torture; yet, Scarry provides a point of entry that enables us to think about the ways that individuals may have conceptualized pain. If pain makes a separation between body and soul more enforceable, then this seems to speak to the experience of mystics; however, this separation of body and soul doesn’t necessarily work as it isn’t pain that shifts the locus of mystics’ identities between body and soul, but instead desire (using pain), that  15 works to move them from one signification to another. Pain is desired by mystics rather than undesired as in torture. Accordingly, pain separates the body and voice of the sufferer from that of the inflictor, but how does this work when the same person undergoes the suffering and infliction of pain? In the writings of the medieval mystics this does not seem to make sense. Another point where Scarry’s text is problematic for the medieval period is her theory that pain is a sensation without an object. Pain becomes an experience different from all other human experiences because “the objectlessness [of pain], the complete absence of referential content, almost prevents it from being rendered in language: objectless, it cannot easily be objectified in any form, material or verbal” (162). Yet in mystical texts, it is clear that pain does have an object: the body or the mind. While Scarry’s text does not directly deal with how desire is linked to pain, Sacred Pain by Ariel Glucklich attempts to fill this void. Sacred Pain is an extensive cross-cultural study of the psychology of pain. In it, Glucklich briefly alludes to Judeo- Christian and Islamic mysticism, yet she still neglects to consider the links between desire and pain. Instead, Glucklich finds pain embodied through neurological pathways. Glucklich’s useful contribution is that she helps trace different religious traditions that incorporate pain into their practices. Additionally, Glucklich provides provoking conjectures over how we think of pain and the unusual function that sacred pain, pain similar to what mystics have, is perceived. Glucklich functions to provide another dimension to our understanding of pain within a religious context. Glucklich writes: “The task of sacred pain is to transform destructive or disintegrative suffering into a positive religious-psychological mechanism for reintegration within a more deeply valued level of  16 reality than individual existence” (6). This is evident as readers watch Rolle, Julian, Kempe and Hilton struggle with how their bodies in pain function as rhetorically embodied markers of pain, desire, and instruction. Glucklich also usefully notes that in religious contexts, “Pain is frequently not a problem at all, but rather a solution!” (12). If readers consider pain a solution rather than a problem, this notion beomes a starting point for problematizing pain within the medieval milieu. For the writers studied in this dissertation, pain helps them to create their own meaning. The work of Jody Enders also helps to frame medieval constructions of pain. Enders focuses on how theater and music cross over into the non-cultural world and enact violence on various bodies. She states that in “the Middle Ages there existed a powerful performance oriented and performative philosophy of music as an oral, aural and gestural imitation, a mimesis of law and life which was endowed with a well-defined disciplinary mission” (94). According to Enders, music and life were closely related and this was played out through performed dramas. In her article “Music of the Medieval Body,” Enders relates that the purpose behind some theater was the need “to instill in audiences the conviction that the pain they witnessed or endured was actually pleasurable because it served a greater social good” (95). By viewing performances where characters were being viewed as either victims of unjust pain or as people deserving of punishments, audiences were guided “toward canonical distinctions between deserving victims and worthy practitioners of violence” (97). In viewing this type of performance, medieval audiences were then able to begin to the construct the pain written in their world as pain that was either enforcing societal values or as an affliction that one would need to overcome.  17 Theoretically then, for Enders there is a significant link between pain and violence inciting desire, whether that desire is a desire to conform or desire of another sort. She posits that viewers essentially receive a cultural education in pain and desire via theatrical performances. Enders does not indicate that there is a shift between physical body and ego as Scarry does in regards to the body’s encounters with pain. Enders theory is useful in understanding the performative nature of the four writers in this study. The Body There are a number of studies of the body that have been particularly informative in conceptualizing this project. Of these works, The Body in Society, by Peter Brown and Fallen Bodies by Dyan Elliot merit mention. Brown’s work helps me to understand how the body was viewed in the early Middle Ages. This understanding is absolutely necessary in order for me to resist imposing contemporary ideas about the body onto medieval texts. Brown’s conclusion aids readers in understanding medieval bodies. He alleges: The human body was no longer set in place, as a link in the great chain of being. It was not encouraged to share with the animal world pleasures that might be indulged frankly (if within reason) before disease and the dread approach of age snatched them away. In the Catholic thought of the early Middle Ages, human flesh emerged as a quivering thing. Its vulnerability to temptation, to death, even to delight, was a painfully apposite concretization of the limping will of Adam. (434)  18 Though Brown romanticizes medieval views of the body by failing to discuss many of the tensions that existed over bodies in the medieval world, he does provide another starting point from which to explore the body in this period. Both Rolle and Hilton repeatedly refer to the temptations of flesh in their writing, while Julian and Margery discuss how they have fallen prey to these temptations. Even though pain and desire and body and voice come together in this writing, the cultural view remains that the body is hard to control. Mystics seem to be the one place where the mind and body could come together. In Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality & Demonology in the Middle Ages, Elliot writes: Women mystics, already “ultra-embodied” by virtue of their gender, partook of a mind-body symbiosis so compelling that they came to represent the humanity of Christ, both through self-identification and to the community of the faithful at large. With regard to the female mystics, divinely wrought physical changes are ostensibly impressed on her passive form [. . . .] The female mystic was active in preparing the way for divine inscriptions through her ascetical practices and especially her ardent meditations-meditations that were assisted by physiological considerations [. . .] (42-43) Thus the understanding of the body of the medieval female mystic is always thought to be one of passivity, even if the mind is active. In this thinking, the body would merely receive from the divine even while the mind was involved in active contemplation. The genesis behind my argument can best be described as a feminist critique of the structure of language and the social construction of the body. As I continue to  19 develop my own ideas, I find that there are two theorists from whom I repeatedly draw my insight. Particularly useful in this pursuit have been the works of Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz. In Bodies that Matter, Butler provides an astute critique of many fundamental psychoanalytic texts and expands on a number of important ideas. In her third chapter she discusses iterability; this concept is important for my work. Butler writes that this is a regularized and constrained repetition of norms. And this repetition is not performed by a subject; this repetition is what enables a subject and constitutes the temporal condition for the subject” (95). Thus, Butler implies that performance is a ritual series of reiterated actions done under threat of expulsion from the dominant group. This is a useful way to think about mysticism as some mystics seem able to “reproduce” their actions as a way to continue to maintain their position as mystics; thus, the pain that their bodies go through perhaps becomes a performance. I discuss this in greater detail in regards to Margery Kempe in Chapter 3. Equally important for this project is the relationship that Butler begins to forge between body and language when she states “and yet what allows for a signifier to signify will never be its materiality alone; that materiality will be at once an instrumentality and deployment of a set of larger linguistic relations” (68). Thus, the language that the mystics use helps them to figure both their bodies and readers’ readings of their bodies. In addition to Judith Butler, Elizabeth Grosz also offers valuable ways to think about mystics’ bodies and their relationship to language. To further theorize the body, Elizabeth Grosz is useful in understanding the body as the negation or denial of the mind, an unruly and disruptive entity. Grosz explains that the physical interior of the body is established through social inscriptions of bodily  20 processes; in other words, the mind is constructed to fit the social meanings of the body. Pain, in Grosz’s view plays a role in the way that the body becomes a surface for inscription. She describes bodies as being created through memory/pain. In a Deluezian reading, Grosz notes that pain functions as a “medium of exchange, currency” (132) and forces the body to become an inscriptive surface. Pain is a type of discourse. Grosz relates the story of Kafka’s Punishment Machine as a tool that etches the sentence into the body and eventually kills the body. In this instance, the body and the inscriptions on the body have replaced speech and forms of verbal communication. In the body-- flesh and blood-- tissue and muscle come first; they exist pre-signification and well before inscription. Grosz further articulates the body as an inscriptive surface: “The metaphorics of body writing posits the body, and particularly its epidermic surface, muscular-skeletal frame, ligaments, joints, blood vessels, and internal organs as corporeal surfaces, the blank page on which engraving, graffiti, tattooing, or inscription can take place” (117). Again, we see evidence of this mainly in the writings of the female mystics, and most clearly in Chapter 2 with regard to Julian of Norwich. A Groszian analysis of the body enables us to better talk about the surface of the body. Grosz, like Butler, is concerned with the body as physical matter but what is useful in Grosz is that she discusses the tensions between surface and psyche. In this discussion, Grosz claims: The surface of the body, the skin, moreover provides the ground for the articulation of orifices, erotogenic rims, cuts on the body’s surface [which] create a kind of “landscape” of that surface, that is they provide it with “regions,” “zones,” capable of erotic significance; they serve as a kind of  21 gridding, an uneven distribution of intensities, or erotic investments in the body. (36) The erotic surface of the body is of the utmost importance for my discussion of the mystical body. Many of the mystics (predominantly the female mystics) have manifestations of physical ailments which they often write about with an erotic charge; thus, Grosz’s discussion provides us with a point of departure from which to further explore the tension created by opening and mapping the body. The discourse of the body in pain is related to how the mystics talk about their pain. Also relevant in my work is Grosz’s rather long explanation of the composition of bodies: Flesh, a raw, formless, bodily materiality, the mythical “primary material” through corporeal inscriptions (juridical, medical, punitive, disciplinary) is constituted as a distinctive body capable of acting in distinctive ways, performing specific tasks in socially specified ways, marked, branded, by a social seal. Bodies are fictionalized, that is, positioned by various cultural narratives and discourses, which are themselves embodiments of culturally established canons, norms and representational forms, so that they can be seen as living narratives, narratives not always or even usually transparent to themselves. Bodies become emblems, heralds, badges, theaters, tableux of social laws and rights, illustrations and exemplifications of law, informing and rendering pliable flesh into determinate bodies, producing the flesh as a point of departure and a locus of incision a point of “reality” or “nature” understood (fictionally) as prior to, and as the raw material of, social practices. (118)  22 Mystics’ bodies serve as theaters, as illustrations, and certainly as flesh rendered to meaning. One social dimension from Grosz is key to my understanding of desire as a producer of pain. Grosz identifies drives and instincts as internal sources that are under relentless pressure. She remarks: Sexual drives result from the insertion of biological or bodily processes into networks of signification and meaning; through this immersion, they become bound up with and intimately connected to the structure of individual and collective fantasies and significations [. . . . ] This signifying and fantasmatic dimension is necessary for the sexual to emerge as such and for the establishment of desire. (55) Thus, as Grosz posits, the body is rewritten by desire. This point is especially salient in the case of medieval mystics as their desire (often their sole articulated desire) for union with the divine regularly manifests through pain and/or physical violence. As desire and rhetorical embodiment are key terms in my writing, it is difficult to separate these two terms, as they seem inherently linked. Judith Butler notes in her explication of performativity: “One is not simply a body, but, in some very key sense, one does one's body and, indeed, one does one's body differently from one's contemporaries and from one's embodied predecessors and successors as well” (271). This is pertinent as the writers in this study are each performing their bodies in different ways -- different from each other, and markedly different from those who came before. Also useful in thinking about embodiment is the writing of material feminism. In the introduction to Volatile Bodies, Elizabeth Grosz reminds readers “The specificity of bodies must be understood in its historical rather than simply its biological concreteness”  23 (19). To understand the writers in this study, it is important to understand how their bodies were constructed both by themselves and by the various institutions around them. She adds: Where one body […] takes on the function of model or ideal, the human body, for all other types of body, its domination may be undermined through a defiant affirmation of a multiplicity, a field of differences, of other kinds of bodies and subjectivities. A number of ideal types of body must be posited to ensure the production, projection, and striving for ideal images and body types to which each individual, in his or her distinct way, may aspire. (19) This is is useful as it helps to understand what a writer hopes to attain in his or her own rhetorical embodiment. Further, in her article “Material of Desire: Bodily Rhetoric in Working Women’s Poetry at the Bryn Mawr Summer School, 1921-1938,” Karyn Hollis offers an understanding of how writing can allow the body to translate into the material world and how the material world conversely translates into the body. She writes “Acting as a discursive bridge, their poetry carried them from the immaterial and ideal world of texts and concepts they studied in class back to the material world […]” (98). I am not suggesting that writers of the fourteenth century had the same context for their writing as American and Immigrant workers would have nearly 500 years later; however, this idea is useful in thinking about how a fourteenth century writer is creating and representing their physical and textual bodies. Finally, in a feminist “theory of reason,” Linda Alcoff posits the idea that“our dominant ideals of reason are reflections of embodied ways of being” (Duncan 5). Embodiment, for us today and for our medieval  24 predecessors, was dependent on understanding how and where the body is situated in a larger context. The writers in this study find their embodiment through writing both on their bodies and of their bodies. Rhetoric One further concern for this dissertation is medieval rhetoric and how these four authors used various rhetorical strategies to strengthan the rhetoric that they were creating. There is clear evidence of the availability of a classical rhetorical tradition in the Middle Ages, and certainly at least Rolle and Hilton would have been familiar with classical rhetoric due to their educations. James Murphy, in his text Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, reminds readers that most of the medieval rhetorical education came from four varied rhetorical traditions: Aristotelian, Ciceronian, Grammatica and Sophistic.10 Of the Ciceronian tradition, Murphy writes “there is hardly a major medieval writer who does not mention Cicero whenever there is occasion to speak of discourse (107). Murphy specifically cites the Pseudo-Ciceronian Rheotrica ad Herennium, Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, and Cicero’s De inventione as foundational texts in a medieval rhetorical education. While it is not clear how familiar Julian and Margery were with the actual classical texts, certainly their writing demonstrates evidence of rhetorical conventions that would have appeared in these texts. For women, the Middle Ages was “a new oppurtunity to enter into public discourse, in that the culture was open to the authority of argument forms other than dialectic” (Dietrich 25-26), this is demonstrated in the 10 For more specific overview of these traditions see James J. Murphy. Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts. 1971. (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001). viii-xii.  25 construction of their arguments throughout their texts. While not all four writers always use the same rhetorical strategies, there are a few areas where they do overlap. The four writers in this study seem to have paid close attention to their use of Ethos. Aristotle, in Rhetorica, names ethos as one of the three kinds of persuasion a speaker could use, and Murphy notes that ethos arises from “the speaker’s personal qualities” (Murphy 4). Aristotle defines ethos as persuasion based on good character. He writes: We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely ture where exact certaininty is impossible and opinions are divided.…It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatises on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasion; on the contrary his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he posesses. (Roberts 182) Cicero concurred with this: “Now feelings are won over by a man’s merit, achievements or repuatable life, qualifications easier to embellish, if only they are real, than to fabricate where nonexistent” (Sutton and Rackman 329). Thus, ethos is one component of what makes a persuasive, credible, writer or speaker. Knowledge of ethos is something that would have been familiar to the four writers in this study. Ethos, for these authors helped them to locate who they were as writers within their own cultural contexts. Robert Kindrick, in Henryson and the Medieval Arts of Rhetoric, suggests medieval “writers could assume the role of scriptor, compilator, commentator, or auctor. . . . these roles provided the medieval writer a framework for choosing an authorial persona (25). The  26 four writers in this study chose the role of auctors, where the “authorial voice is clearly present and distinctive” (Kindrick 26). One way that they appear to do this is through one major rhetorical the rhetorical strategy shared by all four writers, their use of “I” statements throughout their writing as both a way to connect with and differentiate themselves from their readers. Nedra Reynolds in “Ethos as Understanding: New Sites for Understanding Discursive Authority” suggests that ethos is able “to open up more spaces in which to study writers' subject positions or identity formations, especially to examine how writers establish authority and enact responsibility from positions not traditionally considered authoritative” (326), and I believe this is fruitful for my study of mystics and their rhetorical strategies because all four writers in this study worked to establish their authority from relatively non-traditional spaces. Further, according to Kate Ronald, ethos occurs in the tension between the speaker's private and public self” (Ronald 39). This becomes especially clear in the writer of Rolle and Kempe as there certainly seems to have been tension between their public and private selves. Closely related to ethos is an additional rhetorical strategy shared by all of the authors: identity/identification.11 This is a common among all four authors in how they use the Passion to relate to their audience, but it goes further in Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe in their identification the Virgin Mary. It might seem anachronistic to use Identity as a rhetorical strategy for medieval writers; indeed, Dana Anderson writes, “Identity itself may be a concept of modern coinage, but the charge the rhetoric attend to the commonsense and conventional about such an aspect of contemporary human 11 I make this distinction as I see Dana Anderson’s discussion of identity in Identity’s Strategy: Rhetorical Selves in Conversion as particularly usefully, especially in her agreement and critique of Burke’s term Identification. Anderson writes “Burke’s ‘key term’ for exploring questions of identity and persuasion, a name for both the process and product of substance-sharing between rhetor and audience, identification has in many ways become the rhetorical-conceptual stand-in for identity” (166).  27 experience is an ancient one” (8). She continues, “identity names the commonally held belief that human selves are capable of-and arguable incacapable of functioning without- some sense of self-definition, some answer to the question of “who I am” in the culture, society, and world they inhabit” (9). Thinking about how these four writers use their identify, identify with well known stories and construct who they are as writers seems vital to understand how they write their own educative rhetorics of pain and desire. Another rhetorical commonality that the works of these four authors is the classification of their writing as “pastoral literature.” According to Cate Gunn pastoral literature is a term that she coins to discuss vernacular works of Pastoralia; works that “encompasses the many and diverse works produced in the thirteenth and subsequent centuries to educate clerics (and, gradually, the laity) in those things pertaining to the care of souls” (Gunn 92). All four of the authors in this study end up composing works which have served to educate nuns, monks, and lay people about how they might best serve God and contemplate a divine love. III. Contributions to the Field Approaching these writers (Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton) as embodied instructors with an investment in pain and desire allows me to contribute to medieval studies by demonstrating how rhetorical authority and instruction works in the writing of these four authors. While there certainly is a rich and varied body of literature on pain and desire in medieval writing,12 including studies about 12 On pain see Esther Cohen, “The Animated Body in Pain,” American Historical Review 105.1 (2000):36- 68; Jody Enders, “The Music of the Medieval Body in Pain,” Fifteenth Century Studies 27 (2002):93-112; Mitchell Merbeck, The Thief, The Cross, and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1999); Robert Mills, Suspended Animation: Pain,  28 the connections between medieval bodies and writing as I’ve mentioned,13 this study seeks to build on that literature by adding a specific exploration of how pain and desire work in tandem in the writing of Julian and Margery to allow them to have authoritative, instructive voices. Additionally, it is necessary to consider Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton as writers who specifically were writing instructively and contemplatively for a largely female audience. By examining these four authors together, a clear picture of how they forge rhetorical embodiment is formulated. By using their bodies as texts upon which they inscribe their understandings of the divine, medieval mystics demonstrate embodiment that creates their authority. More importantly, this dissertation analyzes how these writers established their bodies as texts. These writers must first establish their bodies as texts before they are capable of rhetorical embodiment. This dissertation can make significant contributions to the existing literature on pain, desire, theories of the body, and the development of rhetorical, didactic teachings. By reading the works of Middle English mystics through the theoretical lens of Elizabeth Grosz, Ariel Gluckilich, Michel de Certeau and Elaine Scarry, I can help my readers develop a more concrete understanding of the connections between desire, pain and rhetorical embodiment. Desire and pain for the mystics in this study is heavily regulated through language and also moveable through language, and it is because of language that desire and pain can be written on the body. Through rhetorical embodiment there is a Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (London:Reakiton Books, 2006); Margaret E. Owens, Stages of Dismemberment: The Fragmented Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Drama (Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 2005). On desire see Bruce W. Holsinger, Music Body and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, Stanford UP, 2001). Also see Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 13 See Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2004); Claire Marshall, “The Politics of Self- Mutilation: Forms of Female Devotion in the Late Middle Ages” The Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Culture Ed. Daryll Grantley and Nina Taunton. (Burlington: Ashgate, 2000) 11-14; Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin, Eds, Framing Medieval Bodies (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1994).  29 sense of transgression that allows the person who is embodied to either resist inscription, or use this inscription to tell his or her story. This embodiment creates not a private text of a body known only to an individual, but instead a public text. Through rhetorical embodiment, writers are able to create and destroy multiple identities through their inscripted bodies. One crucial point that I argue through this dissertation is that the bodies of female mystics are active as they instruct others to contemplate and embody pain and desire on their own. While it is true that the female mystic is active in how she is desiring an interaction with the divine, as noted by Elliot, the body was often passive in how it received the interaction. Yet the activeness of the female mystic- in this case Julian and Margery- is also rooted in how they are constructing their bodies as markers of pain and desire. This dissertation further argues that within the writings of Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton, two male mystics, their rhetorical use of pain and desire aids them in the construction of their bodies while simultaneously instructing their (often) female readers in how to be contemplative. Medieval masculinity is a newly growing field and there has been slim attention paid to the construction of the bodies of male mystical writers; this project begins to consider this issue. IV. Chapter Summaries The first chapter of this dissertation, Richard Rolle: The Evolution of a Tripartite Approache to Affective Piety: Pain, Desire and Instruction, develops the idea of how Rolle established a tripartite understanding of affective piety that revolved around the essential connection pain, desire, and instruction. As the earliest author in this study, the  30 chapter explores how Rolle establishes his voice as a writer of anchoritic conduct manuals. Additionally, it also queries how Rolle works to articulate ideas about contemplation and desire- in the form of the fire of love - and thus sets the foundation for other writers to explore pain and desire and links to the body. For Rolle, affective piety was not just a practice, but also the rhetorical construction by which he instructed others. He provides the necessary chronological anchor for understanding pain and desire in the Middle Ages. The second chapter, Julian of Norwich: The Punishment Maching: The Rhetorical Authority of Pain and Divine Consumption, deals with how pain, for Julian, works to connect her to her body. It also works as a rhetorical strategy in which she draws the reader into her body and inscribes pain on her body. For Julian of Norwich, the practice of physical pain serves as the essential coupling of the corporeal and the spiritual. Julian of Norwich as an early female vernacular writer clearly uses pain as a way to both authorize her voice as a writer and also to validate her visions. Connections to Rolle's legacy are clear in Julian, from an anchoritic lifestyle allowing for unorthodoxy in her work to her desire to instruct others in the rhetoric of pain and desire. Expanding on Rolle's work, however, Julian of Norwich's work uses the semiotics of the body-- literally the body as text -- in her search for the embodiment of the divine. Julian's work posits the body in pain as the conduit for a union with the divine. This chapter reads Julian’s rhetorical use of pain and desire through the theoretical framework provided by my interpretation of Ariel Glucklich and Elaine Scarry. In Chapter 3, Margery Kempe: Corporeal Commodity: Desire, Pain and Subersive Suffering, I examine how Margery pushes the relationship between pain, desire, and  31 suffering even further by acting as a religious woman even though she is a lay woman. Margery's body is not corporeal become divine; instead, her body is a commodity to gain the union she desires with the divine. She bargains, using her body as a medium for exchange with church officials, with her husband, and with God. Margery Kempe's work represents an amalgamation of all of the medieval mystics merging pain and desire. Implicit in her work are the teachings of Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich inform Margery’s writing. However, because of her singular position as a laywoman, she is able to prosthelytize and experiment far outside of the institutional control of the institution of the church. In the final chapter in this dissertation, Walter Hilton: Minding the Body: Conservative Pain and Desire, I look at the writing of Walter Hilton in juxtaposition with the other three writers in this dissertation. Hilton is less engaging of notions of pain and desire and instead moves into the rhetoric of a more conservative and pragmatic spiritual program than the visionary piety of Rolle, Julian or Margery. In a study on rhetoric, pain, and desire, Walter Hilton offers the most substantive material for a direct consideration of rhetorical authority. In his work, he seeks to explicitly instruct, more than meditate on the relationship with pain and desire. His instruction manual in Book 1 is the most direct codification of women's behavior, designed to ensure the attainment of the divine. Hilton repeatedly cautions readers about engaging in acts of penitence or in giving into lustful desires. This dissertation strives to contribute a scholarly argument that explores and analyzes the links between mysticism, pain and desire in Middle English texts to the field of medieval studies. Additionally I hope that this dissertation will offer an understanding  32 of medieval perceptions of the body as a locus for inscription. Drawing on contemporary theorists in religion, philosophy and medieval studies, I develop my position on the intersections of rhetorical embodiment, created through pain and desire, and instructive teaching through the texts of Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton.  33 Chapter 1: Richard Rolle and the Evolution of a Tripartite Approach to Affective Piety: Pain, Desire, and Instruction “Þerbi treuly more ioyfull sall þour be lyft to þe kingdom of sayntes, If þou in þis warld gladly suffyr þinges beforesayd” —Richard Rolle, Incendium Amoris Richard Rolle, the quintessential medieval mystic who inaugurated the parameters for the rhetorical style and content of affective piety for those mystics who followed him, such as Julian, Margery, and Hilton, meshes form and content in four distinct ways. In his work, he establishes a tripartite understanding of affective piety that revolves around the essential connection between pain, desire, and instruction. For Rolle, affective piety is not just a personal practice, but also the rhetorical construction by which he instructs others. Additionally, he invokes an authoritative tone that is imperative and didactic in his writing for Margaret Kirkby,14 setting the precedent that teaching, through writing, is a significant part of an individual’s work of devotion. It is not enough to experience the connection between pain and desire, to experience corporeal torment; instead, one has to 14 A variety of spellings of her name exist. For consistency, this dissertation will use Kirkby. Other spellings include Kirkeby or Kerkby or Kyrkby. What we know of Margaret de Kirkby comes mainly from the Office for St. Richard, Hermit that tells us that she was “a nun at Hampole Priory before adopting the life of a recluse at East Layton near Richmond in 1348” (Glasscoe 64). Hope Emily Allen in her translation of the Office writes: “He came and found her mute, but when he had seated himself at her window and they had eaten together, it chanced that at the end of the dinner the recluse wished to sleep, and oppressed by slumber he head dropped towards the window where God’s saint, Richard was reclining, and as she was leaning a little on that same Richard, suddenly, with a vehement onslaught such a grave vexation took her in her sleep that she seemed to with to break the window of her house, and in that strong vexation she awoke, her speech was restored, and with great devotion she broke out into the words ‘Gloria tibi Domine’ , and the blessed Richard completed the verse which she had begun (60). Allen critiques that “she did not reach Ainderby till 1357, she could not have reached Hampole till some years after that, and since, as we now know, she was originally a nun of Hampole, her return may have been due merely to old age [. . .]. We now know that Margaret did not become a recluse till 1348,” (61). There is also significant discussion of who Margaret Kirkby was in the Hope Emily Allens “Materials for Rolle’s Biography” 502- 511, and in the Oxford National Biography entry by Jonathan Hughes on Margaret Kirkby.  34 teach others how to approach the same pathway to the divine. In Rolle’s writing, he uses his position as a solitary to experiment with greater freedom in writing his ideas. Unbound in many ways by the orthodoxy of the church, he engages the controversial use of thevernacular to spread his ideas widely.15 Written within the tradition of affective piety, Rolle’s texts serve a number of purposes explored in this chapter. His Form of Living functions as a conduct manual for women and his textual directives for these women later appear to influence Walter Hilton’s directives in the Scale of Perfection. In tandem, this chapter argues that Rolle’s Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love), and his other English works: Ego Dormio, The Commandment, Meditations A and B and Desire and Delight work to usher a new understanding of desire and the body into religious life. Along with Rolle’s Latin writing, the Middle English translation made in 1434 by Richard Misyn of Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love) effectively allows a larger audience access to Rolle’s writing by translating it into the vernacular -- something that would have been quite important as Rolle was considered the most popular writer in the 14th century.16 This Rolle text is often held up as the basis for his other writings and the one in which he most clearly articulates his position about desire and contemplation. 15 As a hermit, Rolle was removed from the daily cycle of an ecclesiastical community. This allowed him to develop his own writings and ideas. Writing in the vernacular was one way that he was able to transmit his ideas to others. 16 Rolle is noted as a popular writer in nearly every study that is done of him. S.J. Ogilvie-Thomson in Richard Rolle Prose and Verse notes “It is evident that within the course of a century, the Form was even more widely disseminated than the large number of extant copies testifies” (liii). Additionally Denis Renevey and Nicholas Watson both cite Rolle as a popular author. Watson writes “During the fifteenth century he was one of the most widely read English writers, whose works survive in nearly four hundred English (or American) and at least seventy Continental manuscripts, almost all written between 1390 and 1500.” (31).  35 I. Introduction and Background Richard Rolle, often called the hermit of Hampole, wrote during the first half of the fourteenth century. Born around 1300 and dying in 1349, Rolle was educated at Oxford through sponsorship by the Archdeacon of Durham, Thomas de Neville. Leaving Oxford at 19, he did not complete his education, pursuing instead his religious vocation as a hermit.17 Rolle met John de Dalton while wandering as a hermit. Dalton, a fellow from his days at Oxford, provided Rolle with the necessities to live as a solitary. At 22 years old Rolle “had his first sensory experience of God's love: a warmth (fervor); a sweet smell or taste (dulcor); and the angelic chorus of the saved in heaven (canor)” (Hughes). Rolle is the earliest mystic in this study. Unlike Hilton, who later privileges intellectus and thus alienates a good deal of potential followers, Rolle is able to bring people into his circle of contemplation by keeping a broader understanding open of what it means to be contemplative. At the same time he also focuses his writing on how individuals who are contemplatives might face corporeal torment. For contemporary readers, Rolle is often situated as the “father” of the English affective piety tradition although this tradition predates Rolle by about two hundred 17 Countless sources detail the “saint’s life” type of story or Rolle donning his sister’s kirtle to run off and live as a hermit. The most notable of these is the Office for St. Richard, Hermit in the hopes of his canonization at the end of the 14th century: “The Office tells us that he arranged for his sister to meet him in a nearby wood and to bring with her two of her over-dresses, one white and one grey, and his father’s rain hood. As soon as he got his hands on them he cut the sleeves off the grey dress and adapted those of the white one, then stripped off, and donned first the white dress and then the grey one as a sort of sleeveless cowl of a suitably penitential colour and finally the hood and ‘thus, as far as was then possible to him, he contrived a confused likeness to a hermit” (Glasscoe 62).  36 years.18 Bernard McGinn “suggests in “Love Knowledge and Mystical Union in Western Christianity” that during the twelfth century, union became the defining force of mysticism in relation to love and knowledge” (McGinn qtd in McIlroy 21). Of affective piety, Sarah Beckwith writes: The early architects of this affectivity were the reformist writers of the ‘new’ religious orders: Anselm and St. Bernard, whose understanding of incantation builds on the Victorine reformulation of sacramentalism. Crucially entailed by this understanding of sense and spirit as articulated through these doctrines of the incarnation was a reformation of the relation of self to God. The affective theology of St. Bernard involved not simply a different understanding of the role of Christ in a different economy of salvation, but a different kind of subjectivity constructed in relation to the reformed Christ-a self whose love would be the basis and medium of reform. Henceforth knowledge of God will be bound up with knowledge of self, with a radical reflexivity. (50) 18 A shift in Christianity occurred around 1000 AD and can be traced at least that far back through various sources. John C. Hirsch suggests that “the Egerton prayerbook presents texts which, taken together, suggest a conscious effort to engage deeply the individual reader in his prayers and devotions” (17) thus while overly simplified, affective devotion seems to have appeared in a consciously constructed way in about 1000 AD in the Egerton Prayerbook for Archbishop Arnulf II of Milan. This, to Hirsch, represents a shift to “engage the individual Christian, whom it conceives of as an active subject confronting a not particularly sympathetic world” (21). Additionally, according to Watson “From the late eleventh century on, the old image of a victorious warrior God who was to be feared and rendered loyal homage began to be replaced by that of a humanized crucified Saviour, whose death should evoke violent feelings of grief, compassion, and love. Such feelings were cultivated in what may have been a new practice, Passion, mediation, an individual and often exclusively affective exercise in imagining, and imaginatively responding to , the events of Christ’s death in the minutest and most painful detail….Rolle knew most or all of these writings, and shared their assumptions about the vital role of affective experiences as an agent of spiritual regeneration” (Invention 18). Nicholas Watson, Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994).  37 Thus, Rolle is not the “father” of affective piety, since he is working from within a tradition of individualized attention to contemplation; however, he situates within this tradition as he establishes rhetoric that leads readers from pain, to desire, and finally to instruction. According to McIroy, “affective language in devotional literature excites and directs the emotions of the audience so that readers are drawn first to holiness and then to union with God” (21). This is where Rolle was a master. Indeed, Santha Bhattacharji, in “Medieval Contemplation and Mystical Experience,” believes that Rolle, as one of “the most stridently anti-intellectual mystics, is perhaps not surprisingly one of the most notable exponents of the spiritual path in terms of a succession of paranormal experiences” (57). Denis Renevey offers an overview of the scholarship of Richard Rolle in his article “Richard Rolle.” He contends that “proper appreciation of the impact of Rolle’s writings on late medieval religion in England (and on the Continent) illuminates our understanding of the religious culture in a unique way” (64). Renevey wants readers to understand how foundational Rolle’s writing was for medieval mysticism. Thus, there is scholarly agreement on the importance of Rolle as a writer in the English mystical tradition. II. The Tripartite Practice of Affective Piety: Pain, Desire, and Instruction Rolle effectively uses his body to demonstrate the interplay of desire and spirituality. Lisa Manter, in her article “Rolle Playing: And the Word Becomes Flesh” and Claire Elizabeth McIlroy in her text “The English Prose Treaties of Richard Rolle” both deal with the popular subject of desire and body. Manter focuses on the similarities between Christ’s body and Rolle’s. She states: “Christ’s body literally becomes the body  38 of the text; he is transformed into a particular assemblage of words whose meaning must be interpreted through careful reading like any other text” (15-16). Thus, as readers interpret the body of Christ through the words that Rolle uses to represent him, they additionally learn how Rolle wants them to interpret bodies and text. For Rolle, bodies exist as houses for the soul. Like Christ’s body, readers should understand that their bodies might need to suffer in order to reach spiritual attainment. As Julian and Margery would both model for readers later in the fourteenth century, Rolle is at the vanguard of establishing the significance of the Passion to contemplation.19 In his use of the Passion, he is able to guide readers through multiple stages of contemplation while focusing intently on the body as a means through which this contemplation is physically expressed. As Rolle establishes his ideas about the Passion, in Middle English, through The Form of Living, readers are better able to understand both the physical and intellectual nature of Rolle’s spirituality. An instructional mediation on the Passion, Rolle’s Meditation A helps readers to begin to see the physical and intellectual nature of Rolle’s writing. Through the repeated use of “sythen” (see), Rolle calls Margaret 20 to contemplation on the moment of Christ’s crucifixion: “Sithen how they leide done the crosse and kest him doun thereon, and nayled him with a grete nayle throuʒ the riʒt honed. Sithen how thei festned a rope by the lifte honde and drouʒe it oute whiles any synuʒ or skynne wolde last hole” (66). Rolle painfully describes each moment of the Passion, recalling how Christ was laid in his tomb and his sufferings upon the cross. Rolle commands his readers to see and to feel 19 Rolle has not created this idea of contemplation on the passion, but he is further authorizing it as a valid mediation for those in contemplation to consider in order to increase their connection to the divine. 20 The end of this text reads: “Explicit tractus Ricardi, hermite de Hampolle, ad Margaretam, reclusam de Kyrkby, de amore dei” (68).  39 the pain of this moment, culminating in a call to action, prayer: “Bethinke the, and begynne at morne, and so from houre to houre and frome tyme to tyme til thou comme at euene, and than of that thou hast trespassed aske mercy” (67). Thus, Rolle moves Margaret and future readers from thinking to doing and we begin to see how he wants to control the practice of piety for his readers. Yet, even more deeply moving than Rolle’s Meditation A, is Meditation B, often alluded to as one of the richest Meditations on the Passion in Middle English. Rolle writes: More yit, swet Ihesu, þy body is lyke a boke written al with rede ynke: so is þy body al written with rede woundes. Now, swete Ihesu, graunt me to rede vpon þy boke, and somwhate to vnderstond þe swetnes of þat writynge, and to haue likynge in studious abydynge of þat redynge, and yeve me grace to conceyue somwhate of þe perles loue of Ihesu Crist, and to lerne by þat ensample to loue God agaynward as I shold. (75) The imagery here, of Christ’s body as text, and of Rolle reading and learning from this bodily book is striking.21 It is in Rolle’s contemplation here that the physical moments and remainder of Christ’s crucifixion becomes mingled with the interior intellectual and directive moments of Rolle’s writing. One point in particular that Rolle wants to get across is that solitiaries are rewarded by transport to heaven. Manter suggests that “The rejection of worldly rewards for the name of Christ fulfills half of the heavenly contract: As outlined in Rolle’s text, the narrative of the Passion serves as the guarantee that their imitation of Christ’s 21 Also interesting in Meditation B is how Rolle moves through the stages of contemplation. For a thorough discussion of this see William F. Hodapp “Ritual and performance in Richard Rolle’s Passion Meditation B,” “Ritual and Performance in Richard Rolle's Passion Meditation B.” Performance and Transformation. Ed. M. Suydam and J.E. Ziegler. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 241-272.  40 suffering will earn them the promised eternal glory” (21-22). Thus, Rolle’s act of contemplation and his didactic instructions argue that contemplation aids in aspiring to divine meeting. In The Commandment,22 after instructing his reader in how to understand love, Rolle cautions her from turning her back on love through gruesome description of what happens to those who do not love God: Thou sest þat al þe richesse of þis world and delites passeth away and cometh to noght. Sothly, so doth al har louers, for no þynge may stand stabilly on a fals ground. Har bodies ben gefen to wormes in erthe, and har sowels to þe deuelys of helle. (39). Rolle, by asking readers to focus on the Passion and to understand how the Passion meditations will lead them to heaven, tries to guarantee that his students with take the “right” path on their spiritual journey. A focus on Christ is also evident throughout The Form of Perfect Living where Rolle continues to guide Margaret in her quest for spiritual enlightenment. Indeed, after warning of the temptations that she might encounter from the devil, Rolle cautions Kirkby to “turn þi þozt perfitly to God, as hit semeth þat þou hast þi body” (9). Turning thoughts to God is ostensibly as good as turning one’s body toward God—in fact, even preferred. Yet Rolle continues to focus very specifically on body in his writing. In the Form of Living, Rolle discusses issues of the body in his separation of the types of sins that exist: these are of the “herte, mouth, and dede” (11). Rolle expands on his explanation to Margaret of how sins work as he names, among sins of the heart, “fleishly affeccioun to þi frendes or to other þat þou louest” (11) and lumps together with these 22 A nun at Hampole is the only indication of who this reader was. See introductory material in S.J. Ogilvie Thomson, Richard Rolle Prose and Verse .  41 sins an “anger to serue God, sorrow þat he did no more ille, or þat he did nat þat luste or þat lukynge of his fleishe þe which he might haue done, unstablenesse of though, pyne of penaunce” (11). Thus, Margaret is well warned about how sins that betray her emotional connection to God might affect her corporeal life. Rolle chooses specifically to discuss fleshly affection and the pain of penance as sins of the heart, thus creating a close link between the internal heart and the external physical body. Neither of these sins would affect an internal part of the body; they would both manifest externally. Sins “in deede” are closely connected to Rolle’s understanding of the body. He writes, “Synnes in deede ben these: glotony, lechurie, dronkenes, simony...yeve to harlots, withhold necessaries from þe body or yeve hit outrage” (12). Although these are sins that are connected to bodily action, Rolle seem to think them intellectually motivated. By connecting sins to body, spirit and intellect, Rolle is guaranteeing that his reader (in this case, Margaret) will know how to behave in all situations. The only sins that Rolle describes that bear no mention of the body are the only set connected to an actual body part—sins of the mouth. What becomes unique about the mouth, for Rolle, is that he heavily relies on this organ for praise and discussion of body. He writes: In heuyn þe angels þat ben most brennynge in loue ben next God.[….] If þou loue be nat brennynge in hym, litel is þi delite, for hym may no [man] fele in ioy and in swenesse bot if þai be clene and fild with his loue. And þerto shalt þou come with grete trauaille in praynge and in þynkynge, hauynge suche meditaciouns þat ben al in þe loue and in þe praysynge of  42 God. And what þou art at þi mete, preise euer God in þi thought at euery morsel, and say þus in þi herte: ‘Praised be þou, Kynge, and þanked be þou, Kynge, and blessed be þou, Kynge, Ihesu, al my ioynge, of al þi yiftes good, þat for me spilet þi blood, deyed on þe rood, thou gif me grace to synge þe songe of þi praisynge’. (15) Thus, even though Rolle is contemplating prayer and praise, two things that are often associated with verbalization, he is instructing Margaret to keep these silent and to “say in thy heart” a prayer to Christ. In Ego Dormio, where Rolle advances his idea of love beyond his initial conception in Incendium Amoris, he returns to his degrees of love, and writes “In þis degree of loue þou shalt ouercome þi þre enemyes, þe world, þe deuyl, and þe fleishe” (29). Rolle further expands the idea of overcoming the flesh for Margaret by explaining to her “Thi fleishe shal þou ouercome by throgh holdynge of þi maydenhede for Goddis loue only, or if þou be nought mayden þroug chaste lyuynge in þoght and in dede, and in þrough discrete abstinence and resonable seruice” (29-30). Here, Rolle does not express any strictures on the flesh, no self flagellation, nor any of the other things he later warns Margaret about in The Form of Living; however, mere lines later, Rolle tells his reader after providing her with a prayer that “If þou wil þinke þis euery day, þou shal fynd gret swetnesse, þat shal draw þi hert vp, and make þe fal in wepynge and in grete langynge to Ihesu” (31). Therefore, the reader will be affected by her single-mindedness in this second degree of love, characterized here, for Rolle, by the falling and weeping for Christ. It is exactly this type of falling and weeping that would get Margery Kempe into trouble 50 years later.  43 The final text in this study is Rolle’s The Commandment. Here, again, are the seeds for ideas that come to fruition in The Form of Living, expanding his definition of his three degrees of love. He reminds his readers that they should curb their desire for anything that isn’t godly and instead focus desire onto God: “If þou coueitouse after go[o]d, loue hym, and þou shalt haue al good. Desyre hym trewely, and þe shal want no thynge. If delites like þe, loue hym, for he yeueth delites to his louers þat neuer may perisshe” (Commandment 35). This reminder, to think with a mind focused on God, is further elaborated: And syker be þou, if þou couait his loue trewly and lestyngly, so þat no loue of þi fleishe ne anguys of þe world ne speche ne hatreden of men draw þe agayn and cast þe nat in bisynesse of bodily þynges, þou shal haue his loue, and fynd and fele þat hit is delitabiler in an houre þan al welth þat we here se may til domys day. (Commandment 36) As long as the reader’s mind is turned toward God and desires him, then the reader shall have divine love. Rolle cautions readers to stay away from the “business of bodily things” (56) thus, from the world beyond the contemplative mindset. Through Rolle’s admonitions about the body, and his close attention to the body, he manages to both make the body relative to contemplation while warning his readers away from pleasures and lusts of the flesh. The body is the locus for divine connection to God and the site of evil that would distract the reader from God. Rolle’s text situates readers for extensive discussion about love. In his text, erotic love plays the central role as readers are directed to pay attention to where and how love burns within the body and causes one to focus their desire on God. He writes “When alsso it vncescyng & byrnyngly lufys þat, as  44 before it is sayd, in þe selfe it felis happiest heet & itt knawes þe self sotelly byrnyd with fyre of lufe endles, feland his moste belouyd in swetnes desyrd, in to songe of ioy meditacion is turnyd, and kynde enuwid in heavenly mirth is vnbelappyd” (34). Thus, love burns, and it is the responsibility of the recipient to honor and understand how it works, with the help of Rolle. Throughout the Fire of Love, Rolle discusses different types of burning, scalding, and pain multiple times. These occur as he attempts to contemplate and achieve union with God. In The Form of Living, Rolle takes it upon himself to explain love and the degrees of love to Margaret. He writes: loue is a brennynge desire in God, with a wonderful delite and sikerness. God is light and brennynge. Light clarifieth oure skyl; brendynge kyndyls oure couaitise, þat we desire nat bot hym. Loue is a lif coupelynge togiddre þe louynge to þe loued, for mekenes maketh vs s[wete] to God, þurtee ioyneth vs to God, loue maketh vs on with God. Loue is fairhede of al vertuz. Loue is a thynge þrogh which God loueth vs, and we loueth God, and euery of vs other. Loue is desire of þe herte euer thynkynge to þat þat hit loueth, [and whan hit hath þat hit loueth], than hi ioyeth, and no thynge may make hi sory. Loue is a desire betwix two, with lestyngess of thoghtes. Loue is a stirrynge of þe soule for to loue God for hym self, and al other thynge for God; the which loue, when hit is ordeyned in God, hit doth alway al vnordeynat loue in any [þynge] þat is noght good. (19) This is the first description in the Form of Living about burning as Rolle explains love to Margaret. Rolle develops this idea of love through metaphors that serve to complicate his definition rather than simplify it. Yet, most simply, and what Rolle returns to repeatedly  45 elsewhere in this text, and in Incendium Amoris, is that love is a burning desire which gestates from the heart and expands outwards to other parts of the body. This locus of the heart as central in Rolle’s description shows an internal inscription on the body, and burning desire becomes a physical marker of this otherwise invisible sense of love. Indeed, Rolle continues to explain love in a way that Hilton would pick up on nearly 100 years later. Rolle describes the layers of contemplation that can be achieved through love. In these levels of contemplation, Rolle again focuses on feelings of desire and tries to temper his reader by explaining although pain might be part of this contemplation it should not be used alone to achieve this goal. Rolle identifies three varying degrees of love: “Insuperabile, inseperabile and singular.” According to Nicholas Watson, Rolle is clearly drawing on his knowledge of the existing tropes of affective devotion. His understanding of love and contemplation comes squarely from St. Bernard’s De Diligendo Deo and Richard of St. Victor’s De Quattuour Gradibus Violentae Caritatis23 and Hugh of St. Victor’s De Laude Caritatis. 23 For an example of how closely Rolle draws on these sources, turn to the gloss that Marion Glasscoe provides of Richard of St. Victor. According to Marion Glasscoe in English Medieval Mystics: Games of Faith “For teaching purposes, writers in the contemplative tradition followed Richard of St. Victor in allegorizing the process by which the soul comes to know God through the Old Testament story (Genesis 29) of Jacob’s marriage to Leah and Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel with whom he was set to work for seven years, but was then tricked into marrying the older sister, Leah, first, and working a further seven years for the greatly desired Rachel. Leah bore him children, but Rachel was barren for a long period during which Jacob had children by her maidservant before she eventually gave birth to Joseph and then Benjamin. Richard of St. Victor used the story to schematise his understanding of how God (Jacob) works in the human will and affections (Leah) and the reason (Rachel) so that they become fruitful with the knowledge of himself. The story provided a flow chart to clarify the dynamic sense of man’s inner drives and faculties integrated in an ordered recognition of the reality of God. The awakened will give rise to fear of God, sorrow for sin, hope for forgiveness and love of God (Leah’s first four children). They are understood by the ability of the imagination (Rachel’s servant, Bilhah) to relate these emotions to anticipation of the joys of heave and pain of hell, and helped by the practice of self discipline, abstinence, and patience in the desires of sensuality (Zilpah, Leah’s servant) This growth in, and ordering of, the impulses of the will brings an inner peace and joy (the fifth child of Leah which is accompanied by hatred of, and shame for, sin (the sixth and seventh children). Such a state of ordered affection enables man to recognize the achievement of inner balance and reconciliation of powers in the longing for God, the necessary condition for knowledge of Him. This recognition is the first child of Rachel and a function of reason, known by the mystics as the state of discretion. It represents and instinctive knowledge (a kynde knowynge) acquired by  46 A discussion of degrees of love will appear again in the writing of Julian of Norwich and Walter Hilton later in the fourteenth century, and they are also drawing on existing sources, but Rolle, while drawing on the sources, also modifies them. As he is defining these degrees for Margaret and for his other readers, he explains that “Insuperabile love” is when “no thynge that is contrarie to Goddis loue may ouercoum hi, bot hit is stalworth agayns al fandynges, and stable, wheþer þou be in ese or in anguys in heel or in sekeness, so þat þe þynke þat þou wil nat for al þe world, to haue hit withouten end” (16). To have insuperabile love one is expected to focus solely on God and not allow other thoughts to disturb ones contemplation. Insuparbile love is achieved when “hert and þi þoght and þi might is so hooly, so entirely and so perfitly fated, set and stablet in Ihesus Criste þat þi þoght cometh neuer of hym, neuer departeth fro hym, outtake slepynge and asl son as þou wakest, þi hert is on hym” (16). In this second degree of contemplation, then, an individual is singularly focused on Christ and is, in fact, beginning to seek a union with him, thus never being apart from Christ except in sleep. In the final degree of contemplation, Rolle describes “Syngular love.” In this degree, Rolle writes: when al confort and solace is closet out of þe herte, bot of Ihesue Crist only. Oþer delite ne other ioy list hi nat for þe swetness of hym in þis degree is so confortable and lestynge, his loue so brennynge and gladynge, þat he or sho þat is in þis degre may as wel feele þe fyre of loue brennynge in har soule as þou may fele þi fynger bren if þou put hit in þe fyre. Bot þat fyre, if hit be hoot, is so delitable and wonderful þat I can nat tel hit. trial and error of how to maintain an inner balance, and reason’s active initiative ends here, giving way to a new kind of knowledge of God experienced as a gift that discretion enables man to receive. This knowledge is contemplative, and contemplation is Rachel’s last child (Benjamin) before she dies.” (17-18). These same steps of contemplation- or at least similar ones are evident in Rolle’s writing.  47 Þan þe sowl is Ihesue louynge, Ihesu thynkynge, Ihesu desyrynge, only in coueitys of hym [ondynge], to hym seghynge, of hym brennynge, in hym restynge. That þe songe of þreisynge and of loue is comen. Þan þi þoght turneth in to songe and in to melody. Þan þe behoueth synge þe þsalmes þat þou bfore said; than þou mow be longe about fewe psalmes. Than þe wi þynke þe deth swetter þan hony, for þan þou art siker to see hym þat þou louest. Þan þou may hardily say ‘I langy[y]sshe for loue’; l þan may þou say ‘I sleep and my hert waketh.’ (16-17) In this degree, Rolle explains to the reader the spiritual sensation of burning love through an actual physical sensation. It would “fele þi fynger bren if þou put hit in þe fyre,” yet Rolle does not have the language for how “delitable and wonderful” this fire is. It is in singular love where the contemplative has achieved the perfect union with God, which is, of course, illustrated by the feelings of fire or burning love that one would experience. In addition to burning love, it is at this level that a contemplative might hear melodies or prayers, the musical qualities often associated with Rolle’s mysticism. Finally, singular love is where a contemplative is turned toward God in both actions and thoughts; clearly, for Rolle, even when sleeping, one’s heart is turned toward God. While Rolle is not as corporeal in his writing as Margery or Julian, he still manages to use and explore the body in contemplation in a more solidified way than Hilton. Hilton almost reads as a writer in direct opposition to the work of Rolle. Thus, Rolle’s textual physicality as the earliest writer in this study is important to understand as we move through the fourteenth century. While some of this is evident in The Form of Perfect Living, it is most clear in the Incendium Amoris or, in the translation The Fire of  48 Love. Throughout this text, Rolle engages with issues around pain, desire and the body. Rolle sets up his prologue by discussing the burning that he encounters, and attributes it to God: “I knew þat it was kyndyld of gostely caus inwardly and þat þis brynnynge was nozt of fleschly lufe ne concupiscens, in þis I consaued it was þe gyft of my maker: Glad þerfore I am moltyn in-to þe desire of grettar lufe” (Fire 2). Rolle knows not to worry overly much about the burning he feels because he understands it as a gift from God. Also interesting is that he points out specifically that this is “not of fleshy love or of concupisens;” he knows the burning is a different type of pain than might otherwise be experienced, a spiritual pain. He goes on to write: Bot als it were if þi finger wer putt in fyer it suld be cled with feleyng byrnyng: So þe saule with lufe (als before sayde) sett o- fyer, treuly felys moste verray hete;bot sumtyme more &more intens, & sum tyeme les, after þe sufferynge of þe frelety of flesch” (Fire 2). Having the soul set on fire feels the same to Rolle as sticking a finger into the fire. So while he contests that this feeling is not a feeling in his flesh, he still describes this pain in a real body. Additionally, Rolle makes it clear that he is trying to stir people to this love, hence the title of the book, the “brynnyng of lufe.” Rolle is showing his reader how to suffer by experiencing the suffering himself. His work in both The Form of Living and The Fire of Love is to help readers understand what they are undertaking in the work of contemplation. Rolle explains burning love from both the position of the person experiencing it and the way that he perceives it coming from God: “His lufe treuly is fyer, firy mankind oure saules, & pourgis þame fro all degrees of synne, mankind þame lyzt & byrnande; whylk fyer byrnand in þam þat is chosyn, myndely euer makes þame vp forto loke, and dede in þer desyre continuly to with-hald” (Fire 10). For Rolle, the burning of fire is the  49 understanding that someone is chosen by God to experience this divine interaction. The fire is a cleansing agent helping men to purge the sin from their souls, thus only those who are truly spiritual can experience this. Additionally for Rolle, being chosen in this way seems to encourage men to undertake pain: “Of þe grete fyre of lufe so grete beute of verteu grows in saules, þat a ryghtwys man raþer wald chese to suffyr all payne þen ones greue god/ þofe all he knew be penans he myght ryse and afterward ples god more & holyar be” (Fire 17). At the same time that he encourages those who are chosen to suffer for God, he cautions them against suffering too much, largely discouraging aesthetic practices such as fasting. Despite this caution, he does suggest fasting as a cure for lust: “Fasting no meruayll is full gude, desyres of fleschly lust forto kest downe And wylde lychery of mynde forto make tame. In hym treuly þat goos in –to þe heght of contemplacion be songe & byrngyn of lufe liggis Als w[e]re slekkyd desyres” (Fire 26). These mixed messages seem to create a tension in Rolle’s text between what the church encourages and what might be understood as general contemplative practices.24 This balance seems to be what allows Rolle to gain such lay popularity. Rolle moves on to describe what he feels in his fire. He writes: Als I foroth in scripture sekand might fynd & knaw, þe hy lufe of criste sothely in thre þingis standis: In heet, In songe, In suetnes. [ …] Heet sothely I call, qwen mynde treuly is kyndyld in lufe euerlastynge, & þe hart on þe same maner to byrn not hopingly, bot verraly is felt. Þe hart 24 Watson writes: “Thus the reader is confronted not with an expression of anti-establishment mystical experience, but with a hierarchy of rules and ideals.… Rolle’s engagement in the affairs of the Church, which the text pretends is a thing of the past, immediately re-enters by a back door. What he claims is an experiential relationship with religious truths, which can only occur outside the ecclesiastically appointed means for communion with God, proves to be permeated by a characteristic awareness of texts and normative structures” (Richard Rolle 9).  50 treuly turnyd in to fyre gifys fleynge of brynngng lufe. Songe I call when in a plenteous saull swetnes of euerlastyng loving with byrngye is takynn, & thoyth in to songe inturnyd, & mynde un to ful swete sound is chaungyd. Þis to in ydilnes ar not gettyn, bot in he deuocion; of the whilk þe þird, þat is to say swetnes untrowdyd, is nere. Heet treuly & songe in þe sawle causes a meruellus swetnes & alsso of full grete swetnes þai may e causyd. Þer is not reuly in þis plentevusnes any deseytt, bot raþer of all dedis endly parfytenes-Als sum of lyfe contemplatf vnkngyne be þe feend of þe midday in a fals swetnes & feynd ar desauyd, for þa trow þam-self full hee whan þai ar law. (Fire 70) In this section of his text, Rolle describes embodied spirituality. He considers an intellectual or aesthetic point by focusing on both what something feels like and explaining how it might be parlayed into a spiritual experience. For example, Rolle talks of hearing melodies. People hear through their ears, and the rhythm of a melody may be felt throughout the body as sound is clearly processed. Yet for Rolle, this all takes place in an intellectual manner which he attempts to divorce from the body—“thoyth in to songe inturnyd, & mynde un to ful swete sound is chaungyd” (70)—it is not that Rolle hears internal melodies and these inspire him; rather, it is that his thoughts become musical intellectually.25 While Rolle is describing embodiment, he is just as quick to 25 In his superb study Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard von Bingen to Chaucer Bruce Holsinger writes: “The musical body in pain is at once a paradoxical and perfectly logical phenomenon. The neoplatonic vocabularies that provided numerous pre-modern writers with a way of relating their disordered individuating selves to the harmonies of the universe could also serve to express the often searing agonies of life in a human body- perhaps especially a body poised at the threshold separating the human from the divine” (198). In a discussion of images of bodies as instruments he writes that religious writers are encouraged to “elaborate the musical properties of the flesh they ostensibly spurned and to imagine the music of body as the quintessential expression of religious desire and agony” (214).  51 disavow this embodiment by rationalizing the physical sensations as ones that he believes are intellectual. Thus the melding of the physical and the spiritual or intellectual occurs in how Rolle explains the fire of love to his readers. When Rolle uses first person pronouns, he, like Julian later, experiences a oneness he imagines when he is close to death. Desire also plays a role for Rolle in near death experience: Truly when I to dede drawe, fulnes of my blistnes in me begynnes, þat all mighty god qwhome I lufe to me sall gyff. My seet sothely in place is ordand qwher lufe to kelys not, nor vnto slawnes may not bowe. His lufe certayne my hart kyndyls for his fyre I may feyll qwhar-by streght of my sawle knawes no greyfe qwhils I am strenghtyd holly in solace of lufe. For life I faynt & in holy sighinge al my tyme I spende, & þat to me sal be no reprefe be-for godis aungel to qhos felischyp byrnyngly I desyre, with qwhome also in strong hope I byid to be endyd. (88) The linking of this spiritual practice of contemplation to death indeed connects contemplation to pain, even if it isn’t the experience of physical pain that we see other mystics suffer. However, Rolle articulates that God’s love kindles his heart with fire. This fire is what makes Rolle’s desires stronger. Love is largely powerful for Rolle. He advises his readers that they must always turn their minds to God: “qwhen we walk apon hym þinke . . . and also in tastynge of meet & drynke […] And if we be in labur of handys, qwhat lettys vs our hartis to hevyns to lyft & þoght of endless lufe with-oute cessynge to hald. And so in all tyme of our lyfe qwhik & noght slawe no þinge bot sleep our haris fro hym sall putt” (95). Further in this  52 text, Rolle addresses the issue of love. Again, love is the central focus of his text and he remarks that there is a difference between the burning of love that one feels for God and the fever of wicked love, so while both types of love produce burning feelings, it is wicked love that causes fever and not heavenly joy “þa haue certan þe palate of þe hart filyd with feuvr of wykkyd lufe, qwarfor þai may not fele swetnes of heuenly Ioy (Fire 90). Thus, the difference between wicked love and burning love seems to be the embodiment of wicked desire or the clear pathway to heavenly joy. Additionally, Rolle cautions that “Truly oght ellis if I lufe, my consciens me bitys þat I lufe not right” (Fire 97). Rolle believes that his conscience would bite him if he loved anything else but God. Rolle describes the way this erotic love works for him. þis lufe to fyre vnslokynd I lykyn; the whilk no power of enmys may cast dowen, no softnes of flattery may ouyrcum, His lufe clensis vs fro owr synnes, & in vnmesurde heet of obstakyls brynys þat suld let to lufe, & in þe hattyst flawmys of godis lufe makes vs clerar þen goldr & þe swn brighter./ þis lufe bryngis vs gostly medcynm & I hope no þinge emonge all oþer þat may be nowmbyrde of clarkis þat may vs socur so mikyll & clens fro all dreggis of wykydnes vs clere als feruent lufe of þe godhede & contynuall þoght of owr makar. (Fire 97) The burning fire of love is a cleansing sensation that can outshine gold. These overwhelmingly hot flames are what helps cleanse the soul and pulls the soul out of sin and evil. Rolle returns us to ideas of pain in “To hym in lufe euerlastnge þat longis, lufe is enoght to chastys þer is no wounde grettar ne sweeter þen lufe” (Fire 98). Love as the sweet wound plays a role in Rolle’s writing. This love then, “To vs truly it cumys again  53 qwhils we turn not to god & makis vs mend of seyknes of mynde, & swetnes it gyffis; þe body also fro many seyknes it delyuyrs, qwhils it kepis vs in temperans & sobyrnes. Owr saulis it raysis to hevynly desires, þat we in lawe þingis haue no delite” (Fire 99). Again, Rolle reminds us that the fire is what makes us attain our heavenly desires. Finally, again playing with ideas of desire in this text, Rolle writes: Swettar lust I knaw not þen in my hart to þe, Ihesu, to syng qwhome I lufe, songe of þi loyfyuge. A better felicitie I know not & more plenteous þen in mynde to feyll sweit heytt of lufe, & of all þingis I hald it best Ihesu in hart to seet & no oþer þinge desire. He truly has gude begynnynge of lufe þat has lufely teris with swete longynge & desyre of þingis euerlastynge. Criste truly as wer in our lufe longis, qwhils he cs to gett with so greet heet to þe cros hydel bot weil it is sayd in play; luf god before & ledis þe dawns. (Fire 102) Ideally, for Rolle, the fire of love is what turns the mind to Christ, and disables one from thinking, loving, or desiring anything or anyone else. As Rolle explains his own attainment of love, he clearly connects desire and love: Qwhn I began to lufe, þi luf my hart toke & suffyrd me no-þinge desire bot lufe; & þen þou, god, in swete lyght my sawle mayd byrne, þerfore in þe & be þe I may dy & heuynes none feyll, Delectabyll heet also is in lufynge hart, þat has deuoryd heuy greyf in fyre of byrnynge lufe, here-of is gifyn swetnes, musyk goand principally betwixt, þe saule softynand þer þou, my god & my comforth, þi tempyll has ordand. (Fire 102)  54 The fire, the delectable heat, the sweetness, and the burning all add erotic layers to the imagery that Rolle offers his reader and paints for them a divine image of desire. Moving from this early translated work into Rolle’s English writings allows readers to see what happens as his audience shifts from those who might read him in Latin to those whom he is certain will read him only in English. The burning that Rolle experiences stems from his ability to achieve a state of love where the burning fire is the grace of God. By interlacing these two ideas, Rolle establishes the beginning of a way for other Middle English writers to think about their relationship with the divine. As is evident in the chapters on Julian, Margaret, and Hilton, Rolle’s writing is foundational in creating a locus for love and desire in this tradition of affective piety. These later writers find ways to enter their own ideas about love, desire, and pain. Their articulations of Rolle’s ideas will aid later readers in discovering the rhetoric of pain and desire in the Middle Ages. The fire of love, the combination of the physical burning sensation with deep contemplation, ground Rolle’s text in the body and offer instruction for his readers to achieve their own fire of love. III. Rolle’s Didacticism and the Manner of Instruction Spiritual instructional guides were a clearly articulated genre in the Middle Ages. Most well known in this era is Ancrene Wisse; “a beginner’s guide for female recluses” (Wada 1) written in the mid-thirteenth century. Bella Millet characterizes Ancrene Wisse as “something of a paradox: a Rule which is not a Rule; drawing on existing legislative models but also reacting against them” (40), while Watson argues that “if we compare the work’s sense of the dangers of the spiritual life with the confidence of Rolle’s Form of  55 Living, or set its theological allusions alongside the analyses Hilton provided in The Scale of Perfection, Ancrene Wisse can seem cautious to the point of restrictiveness” (200). Regardless of the position that scholars take about the Ancrene Wisse it is obvious that Rolle is drawing upon this text, and indeed genre tradition in his directives for Margaret Kirkby. And as Farina notes “the Wisse’s anxiety, born of a particular historical convergence of lay piety, eroticized spiritualism, and spatial enclosure, attaches itself not only to the body of its readers but to their embodied interpretation of text” (60). Rolle demonstrates an awareness of the Ancrene Wisses’ rich history as he undertakes his own spiritual guidebook in The Form of Living. Though Rolle demonstrates an awareness of the Ancrene Wisse, it is clear that he sees his own ethos differently than what was expected of a hermit. In a discussion of Regula Heremitarum, Watson reminds readers that those who seek a solitary life are warned: “They should prefer to learn than to teach” and “They should cherish chastity, and avoid at all costs the company of women” (Richard Rolle 44). Though Rolle, as a hermit, is not expected to teach-and is not expected to seek the company of women, he is both teaching, and at least choosing as his subject for instruction, a woman. Rolle establishes himself as a teacher in The Form of Living in the ways he writes to Margaret and in his glosses of the difficulties she might encounter in her spiritual journey. It is also in his teaching that he is most cleary writing within the genre of Pastoral Literarture. As a spiritual guide for Margaret Kirkby, Rolle instructed her in a number of situations. First and foremost he was interested in offering her guidance upon her enclosure as an anchoress. A significant portion of Rolle’s writing was collected in a large variety of manuscripts each stemming from two different branches, Wiltshire,  56 Longleat House, MS 29 (Longleat) and Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd v64 III (C.U.L. MS). While this chapter does not intend to interrogate the construction of these manuscripts, it is important for readers to know that a number of works were often grouped together and attributed to Rolle for the education of Margaret. His English texts addressed to Margaret include Meditation A, Ego Dormio, and The Form of Living.26 Of additional interest is his text, The Commandment. In these texts, Rolle takes the rhetorical position of a spiritual guide who offers entrée into a more devout experience than Margaret might have otherwise been able to achieve on her own (though one must wonder, if Julian and Margery seemed to attain this experience without the guidance of men then surely Margaret might have achieved it as well). These texts are thought to have appeared between 1340 and 1349, though there is not a certain order that they appeared in. There is some agreement that The Form of Living is among Rolle’s later works and perhaps because of this later writing most closely follows the genre of the conduct manual for religious women.27 Rolle’s Form of Living, a short treatise, analyzes different functions of an anchoress’s life and offers instruction in manageable slices of information. The text ends with Rolle’s advice to Margaret “Lo, Margaret, I haue shortly seid þe fourme of lyuynge, and how þou may cum to perfeccioun, and to loue hym þat þou hast taken þe to. If hit doth þe good and profite to þe, thanke God and pray 26 The editions of these texts are from EETS 293 Richard Rolle, Prose and Verse. 27 Watson writes: “Rolle’s greatest predecessor as a writer of English works of instruction for women, the author of Ancrene Wisse, achieves his own highly individual combination of intimacy and authority by means, first, of a detailed engagement in the lives of his readers, second, of a judiciously exercised tone of absolute command in which his role as priestly representative of the Church and of Christ comes to the fore. Rolle can imitate neither half of this recipe, for his teaching is largely unconcerned with day-to-day life, and he is not in a position to assume the institutional authority of the priest commanding his readers to obedience. What he does instead- to generalize about a situation which is very varied in practice-is typically to charm the reader with the affective force of his personality as a youthful lover of Christ, bathing the fervent love he is always commending in the glow of his own magnetism.” (226). Thus while Rolle is clearly following in the tradition of instructional manuals, he breaks away from the tradition and infuses it with a more erotically charged and personally affective rhetoric.  57 for me” (25). This simple advice that Rolle gives to Margaret about achieving perfection becomes far more complex when we look at the ways in which the instruction is delivered to her. Rolle begins his teaching to Margaret by helping her situate herself within the tradition of the anchoritic community. He writes: For þat þou hast forsaken þe solace and þe ioy of þis world, and take þe solitarie life for Goddis loue, to suffre tribulaciouns and anguysshes here, and aftre to cum to reste and ioye in heuyn, I trow stidfastly þat þe confrot of Ihesu Criste and | swetnesse of his loue, with þe fyre or þe Holy Goste þat purgeth al syn, shal be in þe and with þe, ledynge and lernynge þe how þou shalt þynke, how þou shalt prey, what þou shalt worche, so þat in a few yers þou shalt haue more delite to be by þyn on and spek to þi loue [and] þi spouse Ihesu, þan I þou were lady of a thousand worldes. Men weneth þat we haue peyn and penaunce, bot we haue more ioy and verrey delite in oon day þan þei haue in þe world al har lyfe. Thei seen our body, bot þei seth nat oure herte wher our solace is. If þei saw þat, many of ham wold forsake al þat þei haue for to follow vs. Forþi be comforted and stalwarth, and dreed no noy ne anguysshe, bot fast al þyn entent þat þi life be God to queme, and þat þer be no thynge in þe þat shold be myspaynge to hym þat þou ne sone amend hit. (6) Rolle entreats Margaret to take joy in her new-found solitude, thus insinuating that this is a path she has perhaps newly chosen. Here, Rolle acts as a champion for Margaret’s undertaking. Early in the text, he reminds her that in a few years she will be experiencing  58 more joy than anyone, even though the outside world thinks that men and women who choose this lifestyle suffer more pain and penance than anything else. Additionally, Rolle explains that through contemplation Margaret will not need to dread trouble or anguish, but instead she should turn all of her intent to please God. This trade off, no trouble or anguish in exchange for a life of devotion to God seems palatable to Margaret, and of course to Rolle, even though it doesn’t seem as if he thinks that most of the outside world finds this lifestyle palatable. In this early part of his work to Margaret, he is also careful to contextualize the writing within the existing religious tradition. Rolle calls attention to the writing of both Saint Jerome and Saint Bernard, drawing on them as major figures in English anchoritic piety; in fact in his own writing he has heavily sourced from Bernard.28 He writes: And hit is mych more perille þan men weneth, for Seynt Ierom seith þat he maket of ravyn offrynge þat outrageouslye turmenteth his body in ouer litel mete or sleepe; and Seynte Bernard seith fastynge and wakynge letteth nat goostly goodes bot helpeth, if þei be done with discrecioun; withouten þat þei ben vices. Forþi hit is nat good to þeyne vs so mych, and seþyn haue unþanke for our dede. Thar haue ben many, and ben, þat weneth þat hi[t i]s nat al þat þay don, bot if þat þai ben in so myce abstinence and fastynge þat þey make al to speke of ham þat knowen ham. (4-5) 28 Bernard of Clairveux and St. Jerome were both prolific writers with whom Rolle would have been familiar. From Bernard, Rolle is specifically taking source material from De Dilgendo Deo, De Gradibus Humilitatis et Superbiae, and Sermones super Cantica Canticorum. For more detailed discussion on this see Chapter 2 “The Structure of Rolle’s Thought” in Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority by Nichols Watson.  59 This caution, insisting on moderation while undertaking a contemplative life, allows Rolle, and therefore Margaret, to stay well within what the theologians and clergy would have thought appropriate for them. In writing a conduct manual for female anchorites, Rolle is cautious in how he instructs Margaret to live. Like Margery, Julian and Hilton will later, Rolle discusses the issue of temptations to the contemplative individual. Rolle focuses not on mental anguish as Julian does, but more on corporeal torment. He writes: Oon, whan he eggeth vs to ouer mych eese and reste of body and softhed to oure fleisshe, vndre need to sustene our kynd; for such thoghtes he putteh in vs; bot yf [w]e et wel and d[r]ynke wel and sleep wel and ligge soft and sit warme, [w]e may nat serue God, ne leste in þe trauaille þat [w]e haue begune. Bot he þynketh to brynge vs to ouer mych luste of oure body, and for to make vs slowe and cold in Goddis loue. Another is whan, vndre the liknes of goostly good, he entisseth vs to ouer sharpe and ouer mych penaunce for to destrue oure self, and seith thus. (7-8) Interestingly, in this segment of Rolle’s writing, the imagery of being made slow and cold in God’s love as a direct result of the Devil’s interference plays a central role, in direct opposition to his previous writings which focused on heat, fire, and burning. Thus, when a reader, perhaps even Margaret, is overly stimulated by her existence in her body, the Devil makes it seem as if it is God who is turning her away from the burning fire. Rolle is concerned about how physical temptations manifest for Margaret, and of course for other people. As someone who is newly enclosed, Margaret needs guidance to achieve contemplative perfection; and to understand what might cause her to stray from her path.  60 This is part of the work that Rolle’s text achieves. Later, other readers as well, would see Rolle’s text as guidance for contemplation. The moments of temptation that Rolle’s readers encounter contrast with how an individual should seek union with God as Rolle had already mentioned, while many think that it is fasting, and other forms of deprivation that bring one close to God; he contests that these things are the work of the Devil. It is the devil who deprives contemplatives of food and drink and sleep and also hinders them by creating lust in their bodies. Additionally, the devil tries to draw the focus of the contemplative from God by enticing them to suffer undue penance and harshness. Rolle instead recommends that the contemplative not destroy herself through penance of this sort but instead states: He þat seith þe þus, he is about to sleep e with ouer mych, asl he þat seid þeþ e toþer wild sle the with ouer litelle. Forþi, if we wil be right disposed, vs bihoueth set vs in a good meen, so þat we may detroy oure vices and hold our fleisshe vndre, and neuerþelatre pat hi be stalworh in oe seruice of Ihesu Criste. (8) Thus, by cautioning against the extreme practices that the devil might entice a person towards, Rolle is again ensuring that Margaret and other lay readers of his book are following the appropriate path to divine union. What makes Rolle’s instruction remarkable here is that although he cautions against extreme fasting or penance, in other writings, Rolle manages to suggest the use of these same ideas to help achieve this divine union that he assumes everyone eagerly seeks. One way to reconcile these differences in Rolle’s text is to suggest that, as an instructor, he does not want to move his female student to practices that might become  61 confusing for her. Thus, he alleviates himself of the anxiety that Margaret would engage in practices in an unconscious manner. Rolle assumes this contradiction with the confidence of one who knows the difference between divine love and eternal damnation. In The Fire of Love and in Desire and Delight, Rolle makes statements that connect ideas about pain/penance to achieving union with the divine. For example, he encourages people to deep contemplation in Desire and Delight when he writes Desyre and delit in Ihesy Criste, þat hath not hynge of worldis thought, is wondreful, pure and fast. And þan is a man circumcised gostly, when al other bisyness and effectuous thoghtes ben shorne away out of his soule, þat he may haue reste in Goddis loue, withouten taryynge on oþer þynge. (Desire 40) The ghostly circumcision seems to be the last step for a man when he rests in God’s love; this circumcision, then, does not reference the penis, but instead the spiritual phallus. Thus, the type of singlemindedness that someone might have encountered as a temptation from the devil is just the same type that Rolle is encouraging so that people can attain the type of desire and oneness that they (or he) hope to get through contemplation. One final instructional strategy that Rolle embraces is silence. As evidenced in the earlier section on prayer, Rolle silences his student while at the same time emphasizing the importance of correct speech. Just as Rolle instructed Margaret in The Fire of Love, in an earlier English text Ego Dormio, composed for either Margaret Kirby or a Yedingham nun29 he similiarly recommends silence to the woman he is addressing: 29 Ego Dormio is considered the earliest of Rolle’s English epistles, and according to its Cambridge Library Manuscript (CUL MS Dd5.64, fols 22v-29r, it was “writte for a nun of Yedingham Priory…and modern  62 “What good hopis þou may come þerof, if þou let þi tonge blaber on þe boke, and þi hert ren about in dyuers steddes in þe world, whar hit wille? Forþi set þi þoght in Crist, and he shal reue hit to hym, and hold hit fro þe venym of worldis besyness” (Ego 29). Here Rolle does not invite his student to engage in dialogue with him over issues that might arise, but instead issues the directive, “stay quiet and contemplate.” IV. Rolle’s Vernacular and the Accessibility of Affective Piety The impact of Rolle writing texts in the vernacular was far-reaching, although the bulk of Rolle’s writing is in Latin.30 Many of his works are found in manuscripts bound with other mystical writings. Denis Renevey acknowledges that Latin was Rolle’s primary writing language and attests that “Our desire to make Rolle a major vernacular religious author, one who, in addition to being the father of the English medieval mystical tradition, has had the infelicitous effect of putting aside several of his Latin contributions” (64-65). Clearly, Renevey is uncomfortable with the focus contemporary scholarship has placed on Rolle’s vernacular texts. However, these vernacular texts allow readers to develop an understanding of how pain, desire, and instruction worked its way into the vernacular writing of fourteenth century English mystics. Thus, it is perfectly opinion has been divided on whether the exhortations against worldliness point to a laywoman reader (who may have been considering becoming a nun, or became one after the epistle’s composition), or whether the opening the emphasis on the second degree of love imply an intended reader who is already a nun” (Windeatt 24). S.J. Ogilie Thompson suggests that “this text was written for a secular lady, but only the text of Dd gives us any reason to suppose that se was later connected with Yedingham. I would suggest instead that the text of Dd is descended from the copy of a later and non-authorial adaptation, a copy possibly made at the priory, where the dedication was appended. The Lt text includes the Ego Dormio among the pieces written for Margaret of Kirkby, who entered conventual life in 1343, the very date suggested by Miss Allen for the composition of Ego Dormio. It is thus not beyond the bounds of possibility that she was the original recipient, and indeed that the epistle was influential in determining her future life”(lxvii). 30 For further discussion on audience and Richard Rolle, see, Watson’s Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority. See Jessica Brantley,Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago, Chicago UP, 2007). Also see, Mary Carpenter Erler, Women, Reading and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 2002).  63 valid to study Rolle’s English texts and Latin in translation against the vernacular writing of other Middle English mystics. Although readers may fear losing Rolle’s “flavor” by looking predominantly at his English writings; it is these writings which would have had the widest breadth of readership, and also these writings which largely laid the groundwork for the affective piety we see in Julian, Margery and Hilton. While there often isn’t a clear identification of Rolle’s ideas being disseminated in this later writing, there are certain moments with the texts of the three later mystics that certainly speak to some familiarity, be it first hand or second hand, with the ideas that Rolle puts forth both in his English writing and in his Latin works. While it might be easy to discredit Rolle’s use of the vernacular because he was participating in a larger discourse, it is clear that Rolle was a popular writer and was read with consistency that is not frequently demonstrated in readership of medieval authors. One interesting facet of Rolle’s use of the vernacular is the way that Rolle is able to shift his understanding of himself as a writer. Renevey asserts: It is evidence that, as Rolle appropriates the voices of the auctores and the genres in which they were couched, the intensity of his own was deemed authorative enough to find itself in turn absorbed into anthologies and compilations which made possible for readers, religious or lay, to hear and diaglogue with the divine voice. (74) As a writer, Rolle garners his authority and uses it to move his ideas about contemplation forward. By taking on this type of authority, Rolle is able to influence his readers and his  64 students. Later in this period, we see Julian, Margery, and Hilton all engaging in similar strategies to make their voices accessible to potential readers. Lisa Manter examines Rolle’s vernacular authorship as well. Manter asserts, similarly to Cheryl Glenn’s discussion of Margery Kempe, that “Rolle’s textual maneuvers in his Latin writings gain him vernacular disciples by creating a saintly persona that authorizes Rolle’s Middle English writings as authoritative guides to understanding the ‘loue of Ihesu Crist’ [love of Jesus Christ]” (16). With the aid of his Latin writings, Rolle is able to be a successful guidebook writer in Middle English. Manter further articulates the way Rolle plays with his subjectivity in his ability to be both author and hermit: “In his imitation of Christ, Richard Hermit is set up as a model of piety that, in turn, can be imitated like Christ. Rolle’s vernacular writings in fact depend upon the interchangeability of both Christ’s and Rolle’s Passion” (23). E. A. Jones’s article “Hermits and Anchorites in Historical Context” states most of the “authors comprising the canon of the ‘Middle English Mystics’ were closely associated with the solitary vocations, either as practitioners themselves or in composing works for an anchoritic or hermetic audience” (3). Clearly this was true of Julian and Margery as well as Walter Hilton. However, Rolle was one of the founders of this tradition in the Middle Ages in terms of solitaries and contemplation.31 Jones further argues: Hermits and anchorites were also liminal figures, positioned on the physical and symbolic margins of communities, and as such could exercise vital functions (such as the resolution of disputes) that could not 31 I’m not suggesting that there were not countless hermits who functioned as solitaries etc. but that Rolle is one of the earliest Middle English writers to use affective piety.  65 be successfully performed either by complete outsiders or by those enmeshed in the many networks of relationships within a society. (17) When we approach Rolle, it is particularly important to remember his situation as a hermit and thus as a solitary contemplative. As an outsider to a larger more tightly linked community, such as a monastic house, Rolle was able to address his notions of contemplation to his readers without fearing that he was going to cross the boundaries of orthodoxy. In the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Jonathan Hughes writes that Rolle “recognized no duty of obedience to any ecclesiastical authority and exulted in his triumphant membership of the elect and in mystical experiences that placed him above the earthly church.” As a member of that liminal space Rolle, like Julian and Hilton, was able to express his ideas while he was both contained by the church and in some way, working to transgress its boundaries. While Rolle’s disconnect from any monastic house enabled him to transgress certain boundaries, vernacular writing also made Rolle somewhat vulnerable to attacks on his orthodoxy and as a vernacular writer here remained the possibility for him to being seen as heretic. As a vernacular writer, Rolle’s texts were often twisted to fit Lollard arguments.32 Thus, the availability of his texts in English, rather than in Latin makes the writing accessible to those who, in the eyes of the church, could do damage with access to these spiritual ideas. There were multiple cases of writings from Lollard individuals who annotated Rolle’s arguments or crossed out the parts of his texts that they did not 32 For more specific discussion of the implications of Lollardy and Rolle’s writing see: Michael P. Kuczynski “Rolle Among the Reformers: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy in Wycliffite Copies of Richard Rolle’s English Psalter,” Mysticism and Spirituatlity in Medieval England, Ed. William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1997). Also see Kevin Gustafson, “Richard Rolle’s English Psalter and the making of a Lollard Text,” Viator 33 (2002): 294-309.  66 agree with. In her article, “Wycliffite Spirituality,” Fiona Somerset argues that Rolle “is one writer whose experimentation with using the vernacular to explain how to attain the highest peaks of devotional fervor, not to mention his interest in scriptural translation and explication, far exceeded more constrained models of lay instruction that we associate with the reaction against Lollardy” (377). Although Rolle’s spirituality may have seemed unconstrained, he does manage to keep his theology in line with the mainstream church. Somerset also offers commentary on Rolle. She writes: Read as a whole, the text’s advice would seem to have limited scope and appeal: its overall aim is to confirm its first reader in her decision to become an anchoress by explaining that the contemplative life is the best option. Yet both the advice on how to conform the will to God found in the text’s first half and the second half’s rhapsodic description of the love of Jesus Christ seem to have found a much wider audience. The key to this apparent puzzle may be Nicholas Watson’s insight that Rolle’s rich and eloquent accounts of the inner life disposed toward God in this and other words manage to be both elitist and democratic at the same time: their systemic explanations of how to attain a kind of union with God that is open only to a select few simultaneously show every reader how to make the attempt. (378) Rolle’s accessibility to the populace is part of what makes him an attractive and interesting writer for people. It helps us to situate him as a writer at the forefront of the vernacular writing tradition. By assuming a position that largely situates Rolle as an  67 individual with desire he is able to show others how desire works in tandem with spirituality. For instance, in Desire and Delight he writes: Two þynges maketh our delite pure. On is turnynge of þe senualite to þe skylle, for when any is turned to delit of hi five wittes, alson vnclennesse entreth in to his soule. Another is þat þe skyl meekly be vsed in gostly þynges, as in meditacioun and orisone and lokynge in holy bokes. (40) Thus, Rolle has physical desire, but warns readers away from experiencing these pleasures with any of the five senses. Instead, these should be experienced within a person reason; hence, desire for Christ and a spiritual understanding of Christ work together. McIlroy also discusses Rolle’s readership in her text The English Prose Treaties of Richard Rolle. Audience is a central issue for McIlroy early in her study. She posits: Rolle’s English treatises do not conform to the traditional audience-based approaches to his work: They do not comply with many of the tenets of epistolary literature; they do not explicitly address specific persons; nor do they appear to be exclusively gendered directives that solicit only a female audience. Instead, in each work Rolle offers a guide to the spiritual life, drawn from both the traditional sources and methods noted above, as well as from his own experiences in the mystical journey, and offers the reader an identity potentially appealing to a male or female, lay or religious, audience in late medieval England- the individual soul. (54) McIlroy, like Lisa Manter in her article “Rolle Playing” demonstrates the breadth of the appeal of Rolle’s work. McIlroy also implies that his Latin writings, rather than his  68 English ones were more traditional in their approach to audience. Again, it is his identity as a vernacular author that makes him able to have a broader audience.33 As both a mystic and spiritual guide, Rolle is able to draw on two traditions that help him appeal to a multitude of people. He uses the discourse of friendship to help establish his ethos and he also draws on features of epistolary writing- or Ars dictaminis (The Art of Letter Writing). In terms of Rolle’s English writings, it is the Form of Living to which many scholars have looked in order to gain a better sense of who Rolle was writing for and what his writing was doing to advance the study of contemplation in the Middle Ages. McIlroy contends “The Form of Living is a unique text which develops a singular discourse, in this case a discourse of friendship, to fulfill its affective purpose of turning the reader to the love of God” (140). Additionally, McIlroy points to Rolle’s use of subjectivity, she writes “The construction of audience in this type of literature, where the reader is often invited to adopt the subject position, the “I” figure, within the narrative, shows striking similarities to Rolle’s construction of reader-identity, his positioning of the reader as an individual soul, found throughout his English works” (23). One example of this appears in Rolle’s Ego Dormio. Here, Rolle writes: If þou leue al thynge þat þe lust fleisshely, and haue no þoght of þi sib frendes, bot forsaak al for Goodis loue, and only gif þi hert to couait 33 Rolle’s vernacular writing, especially The Form of Living is extant in 27 manuscripts. There are additionally 30 manuscripts that contain some work by or attributed to Rolle. According to S. J. Ogilive Thomson, The Form shows “two main lines of descent, each branch containing one pre-eminant member, namely Lt [Longleat 29] and Dd [ULC Dd v64 III] [. . . ] It is evident that, within the course of a century, the Form was even more widely disseminated than the large number of extant copies testifies. […]. Lt and Dd “contain more of Rolle’s English writings than any other manuscript.” (lii). Longleat 29 contains the majority of Rolle’s vernacular works including lyrics in addition to a number of Latin writing not attributed to Rolle. There is also a version of Walter Hilton’s On Mixed Life and sundry prayers by multiple authors. ULC Dd v64 III contains writings by Rolle in both English and Latin. In terms of the other 55 manuscripts that contain works by Rolle, some, such as Bodley 938 contain “Wycliffite texts, including an extract from the interpolated Rolle Psalter” (xii). Others contain Rolles works in English and Latin as well as other English texts such as Oleum Effuson.  69 Goddis loue and to pay hym, more ioy þou shalt fynd in hym þan I can þynke. How myght I than writ hit? I wot neuer if many men be in suche loue, for euer þe higher þat þe life is þe fewer followers hit hath here, for many thynges draweth men fro Goddis loue. (27) As evident in Julian’s writings in Chapter 2, here Rolle intentionally creates his identity as a writer to allow readers to connect with him. Rolle also briefly attempts to connect to readers here through his body by reminding them that if they are able to turn their hearts to God’s love they will find more happiness then in their fleshly lives. Of course, McIlroy’s assertion here is correct; however, it is also limited. The Form of Living should not be seen as an important work in developing a discourse of friendship, but rather because it extends Rolle’s discourse of affective love. Drawing the audience into the text is one of the appealing components of Rolle’s writings. Indeed, in Incendium Amoris, Rolle fashions his audience for himself writing: Qwhare-fore þis boke I offyr to be sene, nozt to philisophirs nor wyes men of þis warld, ne to grete devens lappyd in questions infenyte, bot unto boystus & untaught, more besy to con lufe God then many thynges to knawe. For treuly, not desputynge bot wyrkande it is kunde and loffande. For treyly, I trowe thies thynges here contenyd, of thies questionaries- in all sciens most hy in connynge, bot in the lufe of Cryste moste lawe- may not be undyrstandid. Therefore to thame I have not written, bot if all thynges forgettyn and putt o-bak þat þis warld is longynge-onely to the desires of oure maker thay to lufe only be giften. (3)  70 Focusing again on Rolle’s English writings, McIlroy addresses issues of where Rolle is diverging from the traditional expectations of this form of writing. She writes: His English prose treatises appear both to exploit and expand traditional affective methods by closely involving readers in the devotional narratives he supplies for them. In his vernacular works he takes one step further in the traditional strategy of inviting a personal relation with God by constructing not only a space for the reader to occupy but also a network of intimate reader/writer relationships within the texts, relationships which encourage specific affective responses in the reader, all designed to draw him/her closer to the goal of spiritual perfection. (22) These moments of inviting the reader in to create the connection between the reader and writer where both reader and writer are experiencing affective responses are evident in Rolle’s English writing. This is especially clear in The Form of Living as he directs the solitary contemplative, Margaret Kirkby, through her contemplation of God. One such moment occurs early in The Form of Living. Rolle writes: I know þat þi life semeth yeuen to þe seruice of God. Þan is hit sham to þe, bot if þou be as good, or bettre, within in þi soule, as þou art semynge at þe syght of men. Therefor turne þi þozt perfitly to God as hit semeth þat þou hast þi body. For I wold nat þat þou wene þat al ben holy þat haue þe habite of holynesse and be nat occupied with þe world, ne þat al bene il þat ocupien ham with erthly bisynesse. (9) Here, as Rolle attempts to turn Margaret’s heart toward God, it becomes clear that he is also experiencing the same affectations that he hopes she will attain. Here again, Rolle  71 also engages in discussion of the body- the insinuation here is that for Margaret, and perhaps for Rolle, turning the body to God is an easier task than turning ones mind toward God. Rolle draws on Ars dictaminis as well. Murphy names the ars dictaminis as “a truly medieval invention,” in a culture where letter writing was one of the only available forms of written communication. In a text that Murphy contends was widely available, the anonymous Rationes dictandi, explains how one must approach writing a letter. A section that Rolle might be drawing on, or at least be knowledgeable of would be “The Securing Good of Will.” This author identifies five ways that Goodwill could be secured in a letter. He writes “Good will will be secured by the person sending the letter if he mentions humbely something about his achievements or his duties or his motives” (Murphy 17). This is evident throughout Rolle The Form of Living, where in more than on instance he stops to explain to Margaret (and to other readers) why he is writing to them. He tells Margaret humbly of his motive: Now maist þou see þat many be wors þan þei semen, and many ben better þan þei semen, and namely amonge theaym þat haue þe habite of holynesse. And þerfore enforce þe al þat þou may, þat þou be nat wors þan þou semest. And if þou wilt do as I teche the in þis short fourme of lyvnge, I hope þrough þe grace of God þat, if men hold þe good, þou shalt be well better. (9) He is addressing his reader and clearly, though humbly telling them that he wants them to learn to be good now that they know that people might not always be what they seem. Additionally, the Rationes Dictandi author writes “Good will will be secured also from  72 the effect of circumstances if something is added which would be appropriate to both persons involved, or which would be in the purpose of things, or could be suitably or reasonably, connected to goodwill, such as … ‘affection,’ ‘fellowship,’… (Murphy 17). Again, this is evident in Rolle’s text as invokes the similiarties between his life and that which Margaret has embarked on by his careful guiding of her around what some of the pitfalls of a solitary life might be. In Incendium Amoris (The Fire of Love), Rolle is also drawing on some of rhetorical traditions of Ars Poetica, most likely the Poetria nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf.34 While the Incendium Amoris is not a poem, it certainly has poetic characteristics. Thus, while it does not make sense to look specifically at what Geoffrey of Vinsauf instructs about versification, some of his more general comments regard poetry are interesting. He writes “Let the beginning of your poem, as if it were a courteus servant, welcome in the subject matter. Let the middle, as if it were a conscientious host, graciously provide it hospitality. Let the ending, as if it were a herald announcing the conclusion of a race, dismiss it with due respect” (Murphy 35). Rolle does this with his Fire of Love. His text opens as he locates himself in God’s love as having in “mans saule þe byrnynge of endeles lufe” (9), in the middle of his text he slowly explains the music of the fire of love and in the end of the text dismisses the topic with a prayer “O gude Ihesu, my hard þon has bun in þoght of þi name, & now I can not bot synge it” (103). Of words, Geoffrey writes “Let them not be dry, but let the thought press juice into them, and let them be full of juice and blood. Neither let them sound of anything pueril: let them be of great weight, but not bulky…let there be color both within 34 See James Murphy Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetoric from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance, (Berkeley: U of California P, 1974). Chapter 4.  73 and without,” (101). Misyn, Rolle’s translator for Incendium Amoris took care that the language used for the English version was “full of juice and blood.” He writes: To slike a lufer sothely happyns in doctors writynge þat I hafe not fun expressyd, þat is: þis sange sal bolne to his mouthe, & his prayers he sall synge with a gostly synphane, & of his tonge he sal be slaw, for be brete plente of inward Ioy & syngulere sownde tariand be songe þat þat he in on owr was wonte to say vnnethis in half a nowre he may fulfill. (72) Drawing on Geoffrey’s Poetria Nova, in both word usage and in structure of text allows Rolle to create masterful writings that firmly show how he is functioning from within the rhetorical tradition even as he composes texts that help him to transgress traditional boundaries. The body, for Rolle, also becomes problematic in terms of his masculinity. As a male, Rolle’s writing would have been, at least, acceptable. Unlike Julian, or Margery later, who employ litote as apologia for their writing, men were accepted as writers. It is his choice of writing in the vernacular- a form of writing that was not necessarily acceptable for religious writing and his position as a hermit which somewhat de- masculinizes Rolle. Multiple studies on medieval masculinity reveal that the positions of religious men were fraught with tensions. In her book From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, Ruth Mazzos Karras asserts that there was’t just one form of masculinity in the Middle Ages, but posits “Much of what medieval people thought a man should be comes to us filtered through the eyes of men who had (officially at least) rejected sexual activity as a means of demonstrating manhood” (10). In Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform to Reformation, R.N.  74 Swanson argues “The medieval clergy challenge many assumptions about gendered identities, especially the blunt equation of body and gender” (160). Becoming male in the Middle Ages evidently involved “impregnanting women, protecting dependents, and serving as provider to one’s family” (Bullough 34). Thus, contemporary readers need to consider where religious men fit into the equation of medevial masculinity. Swanson offers one answer “While clerical misogyny’s virulence and incorporation into cultural norms cannot be denied, it can also be seen as a gendered response to a threat, to an awareness that emasculinity was fragile, and prone to violation (166). This is evident in Rolle’s texts. Clearly, medieval masculinity was even less cut and dry then masculinity is in the twenty-first century. As shown earlier, Rolle’s position as a hermit, initially called for him to take on women’s clothing- literally. Rolle is actually redressing his masculinity in his adoption of women’s clothing even as he fashions the dresses into hermit’s garb. This is quite obvious feminization. Later, Rolle is feminized through his discussion of ravishment. Although ravishment helps Rolle show readers how to transcend bodily space, and alludes to the way that ravishment helped bring readers closer to God; it is still a largely feminizing for in Rolle’s text. Ravishment in Rolle’s text seems to relegate him to a more feminized than masculine position. Rolle first defines ravishing as: Bot rauischynge is als it is schewyd in t[w]o wts is vnderstande O maner forsoþ in qhwilk sum man is rauischid oute of fleschly felynge, for þe tyme of hys rauischynge þatt plainly he feyll not in flesche, ne qwhatt, for *3it þe saule to þe body gifys lyfe --And on þis maner sayntis sum tyme are rauischyd to þer profett & oþer mens lernyng, als paul, rauischyd to þe  75 þird hevyn. And on þis maner synnars also in vision sumtyme ar rausyched þat þi may se Ioys off sayntis & paynes of dampnede for þer correccion, And oþer als we rede of many (Fire 85-86). Thus for Rolle, ravishment is something that allows you to transcend bodily feeling, focusing instead solely on spiritual components of oneself. According to the University of Michigan Middle English Dictionary, in the 13th century, ravishing meant any number of things. Kathryn Gravdel in her text Ravishing Maidens provides further insight into ravishing, arguing that “In romance, ‘ravishment’ becomes aestheticized and moralized” (14). Rolle’s use of ravishment seems to follow some clearly literarily romanticized patterns of rape, as in medieval texts “lust is presented as primarily, if not exclusively, a masculine urge” (Hopkins 53). His lack of lust- or rather his succumbing to lust through ravishment places him in a feminized position. Clearly, the love that is ravishing him regulates him to a feminine position. Of medieval romance, Amanda Hopkins writes “In the world of medieval romance, male protagonists must overcome enemies and gain, or regain, property, social position and often a wife” (43), and that women are often shown “as vulnerable” (43). This is one way that Rolle positions himself in his text. Rolle is not in a powerful state during episodes of ravishment- he displays no agency and becomes the willing acceptor of the ravishment bestowed upon him by God. In the fourteenth century, according to Gravdal, ravishment “refers to the state of being ‘carried away’ emotionally, a state of exaltation. From this psychological troping comes a sexual trope: the state of sexual pleasure or rapture”(5). Yet while Rolle is embracing this traditional and contemporary use of the word, it also seems that for him ravishment creates a soul/body split, a radical  76 concept given the traditional meaning of the word. He continues to define how those who are “ravished” by love are affected and how they are thus named as such. He writes “Rauischyd also in lufe þai ar calde þat to his saviour desires holly and parfitely ar givyn & worþely to þe heght of contemplacione ascendys, with wisdom vnwroght þa ar lyghtynd, & heet of þat light vndescyud with qwos fayrnes þa ar rauschyd þa wer worþi to feyll” (Fire 86). It is the ravishment of the contemplative that seems to push the boundaries of their contemplation. It is through the ravishment that they are further called to be closer to God. Rolle further writes of the body in the way that the soul is tied to Christ: with þe bande of lufe vnabyl to be lausyd; & fleynge be passynge of mynde a-bowne þe bowndis of þe body a meruelus moyster itt drawys fro heuvyn to qwhilik it suld neuer cume bot if it had bene rauischyd be godis gras fro inwarde affection in gostelye heght sett, in qwhilk, no meruale, helefull giftys of grace it resauys. (Fire 86) Yet, Rolle also seems to be embracing tropes of romance in how he articulates spiritual bondage that allows the reader to imagine never escaping from the love to which they are bound; the reader understands how that bond works to keep affection and contemplation as the central focus of spiritual discipline. After all, Sheila Fisher asserts throughout her essay “Women and Men in Late Medieval English Romance,” that women are often marginalized in romance stories and there is an emphasis placed on male homoeroticism. In this idea of spiritual bondage, Rolle also sets up the connection between man and the divine in his analysis of friendship: He believes that it is the “knytynge of two wyllis”  77 and that it should exist “betwixt god & mans soule, (Fire 91). This connection is further refined and discussed in love and desire that Rolle writes about in this text. Furthermore, Rolle writes “In-to swete songe myn inward kynde is turnyd, & I for lofe longis to dye” (88). Here, Rolle sounds sick with love, similar to a character in a courtly romance. Readers see this again later in his discussion of ravishment by the holy spirit. Yet there are still other places where Rolle’s masculinity is clearly troubling for him. These most often seem to occur in the moments when he is warning about the temptations of the flesh.35 Rolle’s anxiety about masculinity is most pronounced in The Form of Living as Rolle cautions Margaret against the very things he himself fears. Early in the text Rolle acknowledges that both men and women sin because of the “vse of fleischley desires: for þei haue no wil ne myghte to withstond, þei fallen in lustes and lykynge of þis world” (3). He locates fleshly temptation as something that might affect both men and women, but he quickly moves into just discussing men. In many cases, clearly, Rolle uses “man” to refer to all people; but in many of his discussions about temptation it seems clear that Rolle is singularly addressing issues of men because in other places in his text he talks about men and women. Rolle is expressing his anxiety over men who put bodily desire into physical practice as he seems to have been tempted to do. Shorlty therafter, he writes about how the devil might deceive a man: “On anoþer maner: berevynge þe goodes the whiche þei haue of grace, an so is hy in synful men whan he deceyuet þrough delite of þe world and of har fleisshe” (6). Shortly thereafter Rolle mentions that the devil might try to tempt men with “foule thoughts, vile lustes, wikid delites” (7), and a final place where he does this is in a more general sense- to men 35 Of course, in Rolle’s context this makes sense as there are rumors that he was prone to sexualized interest in the very woman for whom he was writing.  78 and women where he states that they can sin by showing “fleishly affeccioun to þi frendes or to others þat þou louest” (11). Rolle is troubled, it seems, by desires that would manifest in fleshly ways. This in part seems like Rolle expressing anxiety over what his natural rights and feelings as a man are and the behavior that is acceptable to the condition of life he has chosen. Rolle’s writing is the most erotically charged writing of the four mystics in this study. McIlroy confirms that his writing has sensuous dimension with a desire for mystic union at the forefront. Indeed, this is the “ultimate goal of affective devotion” (27). She further argues that in Rolle’s text, he “maintains that it is through the affectus alone that the soul experiences union with God […] Rolle permits imagination a fairly crucial role in the soul’s journey in traversing from the second to the third degree of love” (28). By allowing imagination a hand in this journey, Rolle again makes it more accessible to a wider range of devotees. His use of the tradition of affective piety, including pain and desire, and how he melds these elements with instruction places him at the helm of this study. Reading Rolle through his instructive discourse helps readers to understand how he was envisioning solitary contemplative practice. Rolle understood the need to instruct his readers, while also adhering to existing rhetorical structures. Additionally, his texts mark a foundation for how to read the works of other fourteenth century mystics who followed. Through his own contemplative practive, Rolle teaches his readers what is and is not appropriate for those who are undertaking a solitary lifestyle. Using his body as the text on which desire is eventually written, Rolle shows his readers how they can acceptable use their bodies to gain connection to the divine and also warns them about  79 what activities might push them beyond connecting to the divine and become dangerous for their own spiritual well being. As modern readers interested in developing a rhetoric of pain and desire, Rolle helps to lay the groundwork. In his case, the desire for burning love forges his own sense of embodiment and also makes that embodiment visible. This type of embodiment, forged by the texts that Rolle authors, is also visible in the writing of Julian of Norwich.  80 Chapter 2: The Punishment Machine: The Rhetorical Authority of Pain and Divine Consumption in Julian of Norwich I desired a bodily sight wherein I might have more knowledge of the bodily peynes of our Saviour, and of the compassion our Lady and of all His trew lovers that seene that time His peynes, for I would be one of them and suffer with Him ---Julian of Norwich The previous chapter examines how Rolle casts his authority as a vernacular writer, becoming both a model for affective piety and a master teacher in approaches to the divine through desire and pain. Here, Julian of Norwich, also a vernacular writer, constructs her authority through pain and desire and rhetorical strategies. For Julian of Norwich, the practice of physical pain serves as the essential coupling of the corporeal and the spiritual. Connections to Rolle's legacy are clear in Julian’s text. These range from an anchoritic lifestyle allowing for unorthodoxy in her work to her desire to instruct others in the rhetoric of pain and desire. Expanding on Rolle's work, however, Julian of Norwich's work uses the semiotics of the body—literally the body as text—in her search for the embodiment of the divine. Julian's work posits the body in pain as the conduit for a union with the divine. I. Introduction and Background Scholars have long been enthralled with the writing of the first vernacular female religious author Julian of Norwich, and have taken almost every imaginable stand on A Revelation of Love.36 Beyond her writings, little is known of Julian; the brief biography 36 Indeed, “Julian of Norwich’s Book of Showings has achieved a larger audience during this century that at any other time in the six hundred years since her completion of the long text around 1393” (Baker 165).  81 that exists states that she was born around 1342; around 1373 she became ill and received her revelations; and she became an anchoress later in life. As an anchoress, Julian is in a special group of women religious. Unlike contemporaries who were part of monastic communities living under church sanctioned rules, Julian lived outside of these monastic communities. Ann K. Warren writes of anchorites: The center and reason for being of reclusive life was contemplative prayer [. . . .] Enclosed and yet exposed, hidden and yet visible, shadows behind the curtains of their access windows, medieval English anchorites were daily reminders of the proper focus of Christian existence. Martyr, viator, penitent, ascetic, mystic, miles Christi—the recluse was all of these. (7) Warren draws the conclusion that the movement of anchoritism was the center of mysticism in the fourteenth century (287). Anchorites were held in high esteem by both gentry and merchants and well respected by the clergy (285-286). Current scholarship about Julian of Norwich ranges from daily mediations for contemporary religious women to scholarly tomes examining language and literacy.37 These works invite readers to consider Julian as theologian, anchoress, writer, rhetorician, and mystic.38 Grace Jantzen’s 1987 work, Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologian, and Beverly Lanzetta’s more recent text, Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology, both situate Julian as a revolutionary theologian. While these two texts provide readers 37 Works as diverse as Patricia Mary Vinje, Ed. Meditations with Julian of Norwich, (Sante Fe, NM: Bear and Co, 1983) and Gloria Durka, Praying with Julian of Norwich (Winona: St. Mary’s Press, 1989) to Jennifer Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2008) and Liz Herbert McAvoy, Authority and the Female Body in the Writings of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2004). Also, Ritamary Bradley, “Julian of Norwich: Everyone’s Mystic,” Mysticism and Spirituality in Medieval England Ed. William F. Pollard and Robert Boenig (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1997). 38 See, among other texts, Christopher Abbot, Julian of Norwich Autobiography and Theology, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1999).  82 with a useful understanding of Julian’s theology, they do little to assist in understanding how pain and desire work within Julian’s text. Jantzen mainly writes about Julian’s “Theology of Integration” and explicates where Julian is aligned with or divergent from her fourteenth century contemporaries. Lanzetta takes a different approach. Her book focuses less on where Julian fits into 14th century religion, instead locating Julian’s writing as part of a larger whole of female spirituality. In terms of theology, Lanzetta sees Julian as “a cipher that conjoined expansive poetic language with the precision of a spiritual map showing the typology of the soul and the method of soul advancement” (100). Unlike Jantzen, Lanzetta wrestles with some issues about the body locating the body within the medieval tradition and then providing a reading of the “sacral female body.” Lanzetta asserts: the body can be read not only as a cultural representation of idealized or gross materiality but also as an extension into space and time of self deification, of the power to make preset through the body the spiritual signs, ethical concerns, and unitive visions of reality inscribed upon it from a person’s deepest core or divine source. (159-160) Lanzetta’s theory about the body as a space of self-deification does not seem plausible for investigating Julian’s text since Julian is not attempting to deify herself; however, the positioning of the body as a conduit for “spiritual signs” is useful in relation to how Julian’s body functions in Showings. If the body is conduit for spiritual signs, then Lanzetta provides some validation for how Julian uses the body. In specific relation to women’s bodies, Lanzetta attempts to combat our modern ideas about medieval misogyny. She writes:  83 Beneath the anti-body rhetoric rooted in medieval thought and internalized in their texts, these women were effective in partially transforming anti- female discourses by re-reading the body as a place of the holy. Against the loathing of female flesh, they pitted their own bodies, praying for various form of suffering and self discipline as a method of personal autonomy and control. (161) Other scholars have commented on the threads of misogyny that seem to run throughout medieval literature.39 While positioning Julian as one who has internalized the “anti- body” rhetoric seems extreme, it is the illness and wounds she receives in her text which allow her greater authority as a writer than if wounds and sickness had not manifested. Further scholarship on Julian demonstrates an interest in her identity as anchoress, as a writer/rhetor, and as mystic. Studies by Denise Nowakowski Baker, Karin Boklund- Lagopoulou, and Marleen Cré discuss Julian in a variety of capacities and work to come to an understanding of her composition process, her identity, and her revelations. Cré and Boklund-Lagoupalou have conflicting theories about Julian. Cré’s article “Women in the Charterhouse?” explores both Julian and Marguerite Porete and their links to Carthusian spirituality. Cré’s article clearly articulates how Julian attempts to convey spiritual practice to her readers. In contrast, Karin Boklund-Lagoupalou’s article “Yates of Heven” writes not about Julian specifically, but instead about women’s bodies in vernacular lyrics. In a move that resonates with the argument this dissertation makes, 39 A number of scholars speak to this and suggest that the protestations of women writers were not merely modesty, but rather an honest expression of their internalized misogyny. See Cheryl Glenn, “Author, Audience and Autobiography: Rhetorical Technique in The Book of Margery Kempe” College English 54 (1992):540-553. Rebecca Krug,Reading Families Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England, (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2002), and Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe: Dissenting Fictions, (Pennsylvania State UP, 1994).  84 Boklund-Lagoupalou asserts that there “is a semiotics of the body, and in particular of the female body” (72). Both Cré and Boklund-Lagopalou have an interest in women’s bodies; however, they do not stretch their interest to connect bodies to rhetoric and desire. Denise Nowakowski Baker and Kevin Magill both situate Julian’s book within the larger context of fourteenth century writing. In Julian of Norwich’s Showings: From Vision to Book, Baker asserts that “though it did not circulate widely during her lifetime” (164) the text has “much the same comprehensiveness and complexity as the literary texts of her more widely admired male contemporaries and should “be acknowledged as the prose masterpiece of Ricardian literature” (164). Additionally, she notes that Julian’s focus “on the suffering of Christ’s humanity situates Julian of Norwich within the culture of affective spirituality that pervaded popular religious life during the late Middle Ages” (15). Baker is helpful in assisting readers to contextualize Julian by explaining of Julian’s rhetoric, “The rhetoric of visionary or mystical discourse typically denies the contingency of its production; in proclaiming their authors as recipients of supernatural truth, these texts attempt to transcend historical and cultural contextualization” (7). Baker points contemporary readers to the idea that there may have been little attention paid to how mystical texts are created or construction because a reader would assume that the mystic was receiving the word of God and thus production could be overlooked. The recent work of Kevin Magill in Julian of Norwich: Mystic or Visionary builds on Baker’s research. Magill works to find a camp into which Julian’s writing might fit- that of a mystic or that of a visionary writer. In doing so he suggests that: Although Showing of Love was at some stage, composed as a text, oral tropes that would be familiar to an audience of little or no education are  85 prominent. Indeed, the presence of the spoken word throughout Showing of Love is indicative of an ongoing conversation between the anchoress and her community. (71-72)40 Thus, readers gain some insight into the production of Julian’s text. Felicity Riddy corroborates this in her article “Julian of Norwich and Self-Textualization” when she notes that “It is inconceivable that she could publish a book in Norwich without official sanction and, very probably, official assistance” (111). The production of a physical text is more important in the next chapter as an approach to Margery’s text; however, it is important to note it here as it allows us to understand how Julian’s ideas may have circulated.41 Knowing how Julian’s ideas were disseminated allows readers to speculate about who would have read her text and how they might have received her writing. As this chapter explores Julian, it examines ways that desire in conjunction with pain shift her psychological state. This dissertation adds to the existing scholarship on Julian by asserting that pain allows Julian to access a mystical state, thus forcing her into a position slightly different from others in her world. By claiming access to a mystical realm through the experience of pain, Julian is best able to construct herself as a religious authority granted access to divinity through her dialogues with God. In Julian’s text it is clear that pain does have an object; its object might be the body, or it might be the soul or it might be the mind, depending on the kind of pain and what Julian needs it to accomplish. The works of Elaine Scarry42 and Ariel Glucklich, in 40 Further discussion on the oral tradition in Julian’s text can be found in Marion Glasscoe’s “Evidence of Orality in Julian’s Short Text” The Mystical Tradition and the Carthusians Ed. James Hogg (Salzburg: Institute for English and American Studies, 1996). 71-84. 41 Also see Felicity Riddy “‘Publication’ Before Print the Case of Julian of Norwich” The Uses of Script and Print 1300-1700. Ed. Julia Crick and Alexandra Walsham. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004). 29-49. 42 Bruce Holsinger in Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture also approaches medieval texts by using Elaine Scarry as a foundation for his discussion of pain.  86 concert with the other theorists discussed previously, help to create a larger understanding of how Julian connects pain to desire. Scarry’s work is seminal, particularly for her emphasis on the idea that duress seemingly causes an individual to undergo a shift in signification from “this is my body”—the physical to “this is me”—the spiritual. The difference that exists between these locations of the self is vast. For Scarry, it seems that the physical self is inarticulate and can only become embodied through the voice it develops via pain and torture largely because pain is coded within the existing linguistic structures of a society; yet, our language for expressing pain is limited, at best. This coding of pain and the inarticulateness of the physical self in tandem with a voice created by pain creates a paradox. For Scarry, pain becomes an experience different from all other human experiences because “the objectlessness [of pain], the complete absence of referential content, almost prevents it from being rendered in language: objectless, it cannot easily be objectified in any form, material or verbal” (162), yet through Scarry, it becomes clear that for Julian, pain becomes a rhetorical strategy as much as it serves as a way for her to legitimize her visions. In Scarry’s reading, pain enforces the separation between body and soul. This is also evident in Julian’s experience; however, pain also works in tandem with desire to shift the locus of Julian’s self between body and soul. Accordingly, pain separates the body and voice of the sufferer from that of the inflictor. How then does this work when the sufferer and inflictor of pain is the same person? Julian’s text is the result. Scarry and Glucklich have two different perspectives on pain. In many ways, Glucklich helps read Scarry. Scarry provides an extensive study of the history of pain, and Glucklich retools Scarry’s ideas while explaining how pain works within the context  87 of world religions. Useful in understanding how pain functions within mysticism is Glucklich’s “ecstatic model of pain.” The ecstatic model of pain connects the occurrence of pain with an altering of psychological state. In Scarry’s discussion of torture, readers are introduced to the idea of bodies under duress. Indeed, even in our contemporary world readers understand that a body under duress articulates pain in any number of ways.43 Scarry argues that a body comes under duress typically when someone inflicts pain upon it. In counterpoint to this, Julian’s duress is largely incurred through her own desire for physical discomfort to attain divine unity. II. Calling on the Divine: The Invocation of Pain In A Revelation of Love, invocations of physical pain allow Julian to position herself differently from other women writing in monastic communities. Jantzen asserts that “Julian’s balanced and wholesome view of the physical body is very different from that of her younger contemporary, Margery Kempe, whose attitude reflects a prevalent medieval view of the ‘stains of marriage’ as preventing whole-hearted love for God” (157). Julian views the body as a less tainted place; however, it is still a location for pain. Early in Julian’s telling of her visions, she invokes pain. These invocations begin with her narrative of illness. Julian is careful to tell readers that she did not desire more than an illness from God as a gift. In the third chapter, Julian writes: 43 Certainly this has been evident in countless reports of war injuries/prisoner torture etc- specifically, see issues regarding Guantanomo Bay and Abu Gharib. See Sherene Razack, “How Is White Supremacy Embodied? Sexualized Racial Violence at Abu Ghraib,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 17 (2002): 341-363. Also see Liz Philipose “The Politics of Pain and the End of Empire” International Feminist Journal of Politics 9 (2007): 60-81.  88 And when I was thirty yere old and halfe, God sent me a bodily sicknes in the which I ley three days and three nightes, and on the fourth night I toke all my rightes of holy church, and wened not to have liven till day. And after this I langorid forth two days and two nightes, and on the third night I wened oftentimes to have passed, and so wened that they were with me. And yet in this I felt a great louthsomenes to die, but for nothing that was in earth that me liked to live for, ne for no paine that I was afraid of, for I trusted in God of his mercy. (130-131) Julian’s illness,44 which in total lasts six days, is reminiscent for readers of the biblical crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. On Julian’s fourth night, roughly “Holy Thursday” in the crucifixion story, she receives last rites, only to be “resurrected” three days later through the visions she has earned. Thus, Julian structures her illness in close comparison to the very familiar story of the Passion and becomes knowledgeable of the divine. This would be a compelling comparison for readers who would be intimately familiar with the Passion story. Now that Julian’s body has been purified through sickness she is a suitable vessel for visions. III. The Body as Text/The Body in Pain Scarry argues that pain is a sensation that defies language, while it is simultaneously a sensation that constructs how people think of their existence. To apply Scarry’s arguments to Julian’s text readers need to understand the individual as an autonomous subject—one who might experience pain as an occurrence unique to the 44 For another take on Julian’s illness see James T. McIlwain. “The bodeyly sekeney of Julian of Norwich” Journal of Medieval History 10 (1984): 167-180 where he argues that Julian’s sickness was caused by botulism.  89 body and one who would then experience this as the cause of a divide between the body and the psychological self. Scarry makes this point through her discussion of torture, stating, as I cited earlier, that torture makes emphatic the ever present, but except in the extremity of sickness and death, only latent distinction between a self and a body, between a ‘me’ and ‘my body.’ The ‘self’ or ‘me’ which is experienced on the one hand as more private, more essentially at the center, and on the other hand as participating across the bridge of the body in the world, is ‘embodied’ in the voice, in language. (48-49) So, according to Scarry, there always exists the division of the conscious self and the physical body, but this distinction between the higher and lower levels of selfhood is not necessarily prevalent until the body is under duress. Pain makes the division between the conscious self and the physical body apparent. Curiously, given her focus on the body as a vessel to the divine through pain, Julian is not quite able to describe the pain she is receiving. Julian’s expressions of pain are almost always brief and summative. She is never able to adequately articulate what pain feels like; instead, she focuses on the way the pain brings her closer to God. Before delving into her revelations, Julian describes at least four instances of asking for and receiving pain. These instances serve to show Julian’s decision to remain reticent in her verbal expressions of pain, thus giving readers an indication of how the pain that she desires and endures defies language. Even when Julian seems to be experiencing serious bodily pain, her text does not take on the project of describing it in any detail. Readers know that Julian is in pain since she desired a  90 bodily sickness at 30 years old; however, Julian does not offer a concrete description of her suffering. Instead, readers encounter phrases such as “After this the over part of my body began to die, so farforth that unneth I had any feeling. My most paine was shortnes of winde and failing of life. Then wened I sothly to have passed” (133). At the outset of Revelation, she invokes pain as a method to connect her more fully with God. The first encounter that Julian has with pain occurs before her visions are revealed to her when she is ill. She writes “In this sicknes I desired to have all maner paines bodily and ghostly, that I should have if I should die, all the dredes and tempests of fiends, and all maner of other paines, save the outpassing of the soule” (127). The fact that Julian calls for the type of pain that she might have if she were to “dye” seems to speak to the absolution of sin that might occur on ones deathbed, oddly enough, an absolution that seems to be linked to the pain of the physical body. The next time she mentions pain is in response to her own regret about her “impending” death: “And yet in this I felt a great louthsomnes to die, but for nothing that was in earth that me liked to live for, ne for no paine that I was afraid of, for I trusted in God of his mercy” (131). A final reference to bodily pain as attached to death appears later in this same chapter “And I understode in my reason and by the feeling of my paines that I should dye, and I ascented fully with all the wil of min hart to be at Gods will” (131). The acceptance of her pain shows her faith in God and she is then, of course, rewarded for this faith. Julian’s lamentation about bodily pain ends when she is relieved by a divine power: “And in this, sodenly all my paine was taken from me, and I was as hole” (133). This might be either because Julian had no model to draw upon for describing the precise nature of her pain, or because she didn’t want to be self-indulgent as to describe her own ‘unimportant creature’ pain in the  91 face of the kind of pain experienced by Jesus. In Gender Trouble, Butler asks “How do we reconceive the body no longer as a passive medium or instrument awaiting the enlivening capacity of a distinctly immaterial will?” (13). Articulating these four instances of pain begins to allow Julian to remove her body and self from the realm of non-mystic religious and secular people and to reposition herself, indeed her body, as both a receptacle/creator for the visions she will soon have. By removing the scourge of a physical and secular world, Julian prepares her self/soul/body to receive divine knowledge; something that would have been unthinkable for just a mere woman. Thus, Julian repositions herself so that she her desire to suffer makes her worthy and mindful of the “gifts” she will receive. It is only after Julian encounters pain and suffering that she is able to contemplate and write about her visions and her journey to become more spiritually compatible with God. Pain makes her acutely aware of the existence of her body and leads readers to wonder if she was aware of her body when it was pain free, especially since as readers the only articulation we see of Julian connected to her body in Revelation is when she is in pain. When not in pain, her body becomes secondary to how she understands her experience. Julian’s body becomes a text of her pain to help her access spirituality. For example, early in her text, after she has been relieved of physical pain, Julian waxes on her spiritual connection “And in the same shewing sodeinly the trinity fulfilled my hart most of joy. And so, I understode it shall be in heaven without end, to all that shall come ther. For the trinity is God, God is the trinity” (135). Julian focuses on the connection she maintains to the divine rather than on her connection to her body.  92 While Scarry theorizes that a separation of body and soul is caused through pain, it’s clear in Julian’s text that the pain she desires links her body and soul more closely. In this linking of pain to desire Julian achieves an embodiment that allows her to have a definitive and authoritative voice. IV. Desiring the Desire: Julian’s Performance of Desire and the Pursuit of the Divine While visions are the pinnacle of a mystical episode, they are typically solitary experiences. It is only through speech/writing that mystics like Julian can relate their visions to church officials, scribes, and their community. As Stephen Katz asserts in Mystical Speech; Mystical Language, “The main legacy we have of the great mystics is their writings [sic] and related linguistic creations” (4). Thus, the translation of verbal speech into the written word allows modern readers access to mystic speech. In Julian’s speech, (her writing), we find that she assembles a rhetoric of pain and desire through which she constructs her ability and legitimacy to speak as a religious woman. This is important for Julian as a rhetorical strategy that enables her to gain rhetorical authority within her community. Julian may have seen her visions as a gift from God; it should be clear to modern readers that this move between person and mystic is not facilitated through God, but instead through the rhetoric of Julian’s personal desires. When Julian retells her articulations of desire for spiritual connections, she writes about them so that it seems as if she articulated the desire, and then, as if coming directly from the desire she articulates, was granted a vision. As the desire is fulfilled she  93 simultaneously “shifts” into a mystical state.45 Indeed, in the case of her text it is the articulation of desire that seems to be the cause of this shift; however, a reader can also imagine that her verbal expressions served this function as well. Early in Revelation, Julian explains that she “desired before thre giftes by the grace of God” (125): knowledge of his passion, illness and God’s three wounds. Julian’s articulation of desire is what begins to move her between non-mystical religious woman and mystic. In How to Do Things with Words J.L. Austin states: The uttering of the words is, indeed, usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act … the performance of which is also the object of the utterance, but it is far from being usually, even if it is ever, the sole thing necessary if the act is to be deemed to have been performed. (8) Thus, according to Austin, merely speaking a word, a part, an idea is not enough to make an action occur. Instead, along with speech, along with the locutionary act, the perlocutionary act shows that an act has been “performed.” In Julian’s situation, this is her act of desiring. Julian’s “utterances” make evident that her use of language is performative. Most simply, this occurs early in Julian’s text: “Then cam suodenly to my mind that I should desire the second wound of our lordes gifte and of his grace: that my body might be fulfilled with mind and feeling of His blessed passion, as I had before prayed. For I would that his paines were my paines, with compassion, and afterward, langing to God” (133). In this case, desire for revelations brings the sickness that in turn 45 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, (New York: Longman Green, 1902) defines mysticism by explaining that mystical experiences are “ineffable,” and indescribable, that they are noetic and transient, and that mystics are passive and conscious throughout their experience. (299-301).  94 brings the revelations that finally grant Julian’s authority – particularly once she shares them with others. Immediately upon asking this, she starts to receive revelations. This performance allows her to position herself as someone who can ask for something from God and get it. She is then someone with authority rather than a woman who is possessed by something evil. As Julian speaks/writes she uses explicit performatives to alter her subjectivity. Explicit performatives, Austin states: “begin with or include some highly significant and unambiguous expression such as 'I bet', 'I promise', 'I bequeath'--an expression very commonly also used in naming the act which, in making such an utterance, I am performing—for example betting, promising, bequeathing, &c” (32). This begs the question; however, as to whether, in Austin’s theory of the performative, “desire” is actually seen as an explicit utterance. There are instances elsewhere in Julian where desire is clearly not a specifically explicit utterance, or a performative act, it is merely an expression of a want. For example, Julian writes that she desired “spede when I shuld die. For I desired to be soone with my God and maker” (129). Thus, while Julian did get to soon be with God, it was not in the way she had been hoping for, thus it does not seem as if the utterance caused it to occur. Nonetheless, in Julian’s Revelation most of the articulations of desire are fulfilled by her reception of visions from the divine. To understand how this works it is useful to return again to perlocution, “what we bring about or achieve by saying something” (109). If we return to Julian’s earliest desires, she articulates most clearly her desire for sickness in Revelation. In her third chapter “Of the sekenese opteyned of God be petition,”46 Julian writes of the illness she had previously desired. As noted above, of her sickness she writes “Then cam sodenly to my minde that I should desire the second wound of our 46 This chapter heading does not appear in the Waton and Jenkins edition; however, Crampton uses it (41).  95 lordes gifte and of his grace: that my body might be fulfilled with mind and feeling of His blessed passion, as I had before prayed. For I would that his paines were my paines, with compassion, and afterward, langing to God” (133). This articulation of a desire launches readers into Julian’s first revelation, thus it is a perlocution that allows the revelations to be shown to Julian and also allows the shift into a “mystical” state. Other moments of desire in Julian function similarly, including her description of her second revelation. Here she describes her ideas when she was in the midst of a revelation she writes “ [. . .] and I desired mor bodely light to have seen more clerly” (159) and though Julian rationalizes her desire by explaining to the reader that she “was answered in my reason” about how and why she does not need a bodily sight, she is still granted further visions of God: “And thus I saw him and sought him, and I had him and wanted him” (159). This is similar to the distinction that Scarry identifies between “me” and “my body.” Again, it is the articulation of desire, the act of speech that moves Julian further toward her goals of divine knowledge. A final instance of this type of desire/fulfillment occurs late in the text. Julian writes “Then was this my desyer-- that I might se in God in what manner that the dome of holy church herin techeth is tru in his sight, and howe it longeth to me sothly to know it, wherby they might both be saved, so as it ware wurshipfulle to God and right wey to me” (261). Once again, her desire is fulfilled, namely, it seems because she was able to articulate the desire. In this section of the text, the fulfillment of desire is achieved by one of the best known visions in Julian’s text of the master and servant. She states “And to alle this I had no nother answere but a mervelous example of a lorde and of a servant,  96 as I shal sey after, and that that ful mistely shewed” (261). Desire is fulfilled through visions and it is articulated through speech. Also note-worthy throughout the examples of desire fulfillment are the differences between Julian’s language of “should desyre” and “desyre.” In the first instance of desire,47 Julian writes that she “should desyre”48 thus adding an additional layer to the idea of desire. She is not, in this case, simply desiring something. Instead, it seems that she desires the desire, which Jantzen refers to as a “doubling up of desire” (ix). In the next instance, Julian states “I desired,” or “my desire,” thus putting desire more forward in her mind, yet she still maintains a distance between the idea of desire, and the later idea of “want.” Desire, for Julian seems to function as a third term that allows her to put distance between herself and her readers. Yet, at times, Julian’s use of “want” sounds and is distinctly disconnected from the pursuit of the divine; for example, in Chapter X in the midst of “prayer” she states, “And thus I saw him and sought him, and I had him, and I wanted him” (159). In contrast to these fulfillments of desire, these ultimately completed and performative speech acts, Julian articulates an omission of desire in Chapter 26: “For therin is comprehended, I can not telle what. But the joy that I saw in the shewing of them passeth alle that hart can think or soule may desire. And therefore the words be not declared here” (207). In this moment Julian is not articulating desire, and thus the act is not being completed. She is incapable of explaining her enjoyment of a revelation and 47 “a willful desire to have of Gods gifte a bodily sicknes” (127). 48 This word is found under the Middle English Dictionary definition of shulen: “21.As optative auxiliary expressing hope, wish, request, etc.: wish (to do sth.), shall (do sth., be so, etc.); -- usu. in dependent clause following an expression of hope, etc.”  97 instead the speech act in this case does not perform and it remains incomplete thus giving Julian’s vision more power. V: “I” Desire: The Rhetorical Positioning and the Establishment of Authority In Julian’s text, she creates her own subjectivity through rhetorical moments when she demonstrates further linguistic self-fashioning. Lorraine Code defines subjectivity as composed of: historical location; (ii) location within specific social and linguistic contexts, which include racial, ethnic, political, class, age, religious, and other identifications; (iii) creativity in the construction of knowledge, with the freedoms and responsibilities it entails; and (iv) affectivity, commitments, enthusiasms, desires, and interests, in which affectivity contrasts with intellect, or reason in the standard sense. (Code 46) This definition of subjectivity works well for thinking about how the writers in this study, particularly Julian and Kempe are situated within their own eras. Julian’s first-person narrative through the pronoun “I” figures prominently in her text. Dietrich suggests “Julian is grounding authority in the ethical construction of the writer: the life testifies to the truth of the text. ‘The life’ for women writers of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries seems to have meant the life of the writer outside the text as well as the writer constructed within the text” (28), thus Julian’s “goodness” as both a woman and a writer helps her in the construction of her writerly identity. Of course, Julian is not the only medieval author to write in first person narrative; yet in other medieval texts, the “I” does not necessarily represent the “I” used in the text. Other mystics used “I” in their texts, as  98 noted in Chapter I in discussion of Richard Rolle and The Fire of Love, but his use of the pronoun allowed him to be an exemplar for his charges. His use of the pronoun does not shift his position from layman to mystic. In other words, he doesn’t say “I desire” and then have his desire occur. Instead, his use of “I” serves to model for his readers how someone could engage in a contemplative life. In the second book of The Fire of Love, Rolle writes: Here fore my saull boldness has fun a lityll to opyn my musyk þat to me is cumne be byrnyng lufe, In qwhilk I synge before Ihesu, and notis sowndis of þe grettis swetnes. Þe more also agayns me an þai ha stand for vtward sange þat in kyrkis ar wontt & orgons swetnes þat gladly of þe pepull ar harde, I fled, Allonely emagins þis bydeand awdyr qwhen neyd of messe hereynge it askyd, þe qwhilk els I myght take heyd þat to me had giffin gostly songe in þe qwhylk to hym lounyge & prayers I suld offyr. (69). Rolle’s use of the “I” pronoun allows him to locate himself as the exemplar; he describes what encounters he had and how those encounters have worked for him. Conversely, Julian’s use of “I” allows her language to construct her identity as a female author/mystic and to provide a shift in her position from “person” to “mystic.” While Rolle was clearly conscious of his use of the pronoun to establish his authority, Julian’s “I” both constructs her authority and also offers her readers more accessibility to her Revelation. We see this connection in the way “I” statements bookend Julian’s writing. At the beginning of the text, she posits herself as “unletterd” while at the end she begins to construct herself as an author. Julian writes: “And fro the time that it was shewde I desiyred oftentimes to witte what was oure lords mening” (379). Other “I” statements  99 throughout the text allow Julian to shift between her status as “person” and “contemplative.” Additionally, these “I” statements encourage readers to see Julian as the only medium for the visions that will help others. One phrase that is repeated throughout Revelation is “I desired,” used heavily in the beginning of the text, and then interspersed in the rest. This single phrase “I desired” though in the past tense seems to have allowed Julian to shift between person and mystic. Visions authorize Julian; they mark her as more than a “regular” person. She does not have visions unless she desires them, thus to her audience it looks like her desires (which get written) create the shift between Julian, the woman and Julian, the mystic. VI. Purging the Corporeal: Pain, Pleasure & Perception and the Perfect Spiritual Union Where Rolle attempted to separate body from soul in how he engaged in burning love, Julian’s text works to expand this idea and also differentiate her body from others through her use of pain and through Passion imagery. 49 Identification with the Passion is one of the rhetorical strategies that Julian uses to connect to her audience. By feeling the pain of the crucifixion, identifying as on of the witness to Christ’s crucifixion, and identifying with Mary and other mourners, Julian casts three identities that allow her to differentiate her body from her readers. Many of Julian’s revelations focus on her separating her body from those around her. She accomplishes this by using pain to 50 Further discussion on Julian’s use of the Passion can be found in Domenico Pezzini, “The theme of the passion in Richard Rolle and Julian of Norwich” Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Middle Ages. Ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991). Also, in terms of Julian’s use of Christ’s body see Frederick Christian Bauerschimdt, “Seeing Jesus: Julian of Norwich and the Text of Christ’s Body” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 189-214.  100 scourge her worldly body and make it suitable for divine consumption. Additionally, her suffering through sickness allows her to invoke other types of pain and suffering during the visions. By creating a self through a multi-layering of illness, suffering, and pain Julian is able to separate her body from those around her, giving her a divine quality where she is both victim and agent of pain and suffering. The pain that Julian endures mentally, physically and spiritually gives her authority as a rhetor to meditate on the topics of crucifixion and salvation. Throughout these visions, Julian often moves away from physical pain, calling spiritual and mental anguish to the forefront. In Chapter XV Julian writes “And than the paine shewed again to my feling, and than the joy and the liking, and now that one, and now that other, diverse tymes, I suppose aboue twenty times” (177). The spiritual anguish (pain in her feeling turning to joy and pleasure about twenty times) that Julian suffers here is part of her seventh revelation. Its purpose is to teach her and her readers the usefulness of feeling spiritual extremes of joy and sorrow and how trusting in God will remedy all ailments. Like many medieval religious writers, Julian makes multiple connections to Christ’s Passion. She roots her physical suffering in this tradition by casting it as something that was experienced by Christ. According to Baker, “This concentration on the suffering of Christ’s humanity situates Julian of Norwich within the culture of affective spirituality that pervaded popular religious life during the late Middle Ages” (15). Whereas Rolle positions himself as a viewer of the Passion, Julian becomes more of a participant. In Meditation A, Rolle writes: “Sithen he turned him azeyne, and saide to thilke holy creatures that followed him wepynge ‘Wepeth not for me but for zour sy[lu]es.’ Sithen how they led him to the mount of Calaure and than thai rof of that clothe  101 that was done vpon him, and al the skynne and al the hide come withal” (66). Thus, as a viewer of the Passion he can offer commentary on it and guide a reader through her own meditation. He is not actively participating in it and his body is not closely aligned to that of Christ. Alternatively, through the graphic details that Julian offers, she aligns herself with Christ. Julian writes: But of alle paines that leed to salvation, this is the most: to se thy love suffer. How might ony paine be more than to se him that is alle my life, alle my blisse, and alle my joy suffer? Here felt I sothfastly that I loved Crist so much above myselfe that ther was no paine that might be suffered like to that sorrow that I had to se him in paine. (183-185.) By showing how she is pained through her visions of Christ’s passion, Julian is able to locate herself within a long-standing tradition. She further continues in this vein by creating a parallel between herself, “our Lady, and other lovers of Crist.” She writes: For ever the higher, the mightier, the swetter that the love is, the more sorow it is to the lover to se that body in paine that he loved. And so alle his disciples and alle his tru lovers suffered paines more than ther awne bodely dyng. For I am seker, by my awne feling, that the lest of them loved him so farre aboven themselfe that it passeth alle that I can sey. Here saw I a gret oning betwene Crist and us, to my understonding. For when He was in paine we ware in paine. (185) Julian manages to align herself, not only with Christ’s physical pain, but also with the emotional and mental pain that Mary and Christ’s followers would have encountered as witnesses to his crucifixion.  102 Furthermore, Julian’s connection to Christ’s passion allows her emotional and mental pain to surface and sublimate the physical pain of her illness. Intellectualizing pain and suffering enables Julian’s response of emotional pain to the Passion, while connecting her physical pain to the actual illness that she had. By aligning her suffering with that of Christ, Julian is able to gain authority for her experiences as a woman who is worthy of receiving visions from God. Julian also experiences emotional pain as she watches the Passion of Christ in a vision. She writes: And in alle this time of Cristes presens, I felte no paine, but for Cristes paines. Than thought me, I knew fulle litille what paine it was that I asked. And as a wrech I repented me, thinking if I had wiste what it had be, loth me had been to have preyde it. For methought my paines passed ony bodely dethe. (183) Julian’s emotional distress at watching the Passion is combined with her own ruminations on physical pain. Her commentary indicates that before her illness (and thus her reception of the visions) she lacked knowledge of how painful pain could be; however, once she experienced the physical and emotional pain of Christ during the Passion she saw that “human” suffering was nothing in comparison to what Christ suffered. It is Christ’s suffering that triggers Julian’s emotional distress. Finally, Julian experiences mental anguish through her newfound knowledge of the Passion. This type of mental anguish is distinctly different from a physical pain. While the physical pain that Julian experiences is directly connected to illness, this emotional suffering is more connected to reflection on how pain can cause emotional torment. Her endurance of this pain, and the way it transforms her mental state separates  103 her from others in pain and allows her to focus all her energy upon religious objectives. Though Julian endures the pain that Christ suffers, she repeatedly reminds readers that she is enduring this pain in an effort to become closer to God. It is through her pain that she is able to connect to Christ. Even when Julian asks for, indeed prays for her pains, she is always relatively surprised at receiving them. In contrast to her identification with the Passion, Julian also uses death imagery to define her body. Important to note is the “way medieval English people viewed the boundary between life and death in their own bodies” (Getz 92). This boundary was less defined than it is today. Contemporarily, pleasure and pain is located in bodies, not in spirits. However, for medieval people-the boundary between body and spirit was more fluid. The spirit was often more important than the body which was widely thought of as the temporary housing of the spirit. Thus the medieval notion of body/spirit helps to challenge Scarry’s claim regarding the strong separation of body and spirit. In general, the body was less important that the spirit and it is this idea that mystics bring into dialogue. Julian manages to resist death, which allows her to show her control over her own soul and thus further proving her worthiness for divine reception. As Julian suffered through her illness she tells readers “And in this, sodenly all my paine was taken from me, and I was as hole, and namely in the over parte of my body, as ever I was befor. . . . I merveyled at this sodyn change, for methought that it was a prevy working of God, and not of kind” (133). thus, Julian revives from her deathbed. By not dying, Julian positions herself as a worthy “receptacle,” able to receive visions and allow her spirit and body to attain divine sanction.  104 Julian’s authority comes from the way she stratifies her mystic self and her lay self. Pain allows Julian to connect to readers. Her body becomes similar to the experiences of the bodies that will later read her. According to Marleen Cré: Julian thus invites the readers not just to read the text as the experience of someone else but to try to make sense of it as if it had been their own experience. She tries to describe the revelations in terminology as detailed as possible, distinguishing between being taught ‘be bodyle syght and be worde formede in myne understondynge and be gastelye sygt’ (Amherst, fo. 101/23-24; Showings, I, 224/2-3). (54) However, at the same time that she connects to readers through an experience that she shares with them, that when she experiences visions, her subject position shifts sets her far enough away from her readers so as to allow her to maintain sense of rhetorical authority in her writing. The pain that Julian experiences allows her to be on the same footing as her readers- she feels and endures pain, as they do, yet the way pain works for her spiritually separates her from her audience. Julian feels pain when she is not in a mystical state. She writes: I have saide at the beginning, wher it seyth ‘And in this sodeynly al my paine was taken fro me,’ of which paine I had no grefe ne no disesse, as long as the fifteen shewings lasted in shewing. And at the ende alle was close, and I saw no more, and soone I felt that I should life longer. And anone my sicknes cam agene, furst in my hede, with a sounde and a dinne; and sodeynly all my body was fulfilled with sicknes like as it was before, and I was as baren and as drye as I had never had comfort but litille and as  105 a wrech morned and heved for feeling of my bodely paines and for failing of comforte, gostly and bodely. (331) This pain that evolves when Julian’s visions drift away allow her to reconnect to her audience as someone like them. She suffers, as lay people suffer, from illness and it is only, in her mind, the grace of God that keeps her suffering at bay. Julian’s illness is one factor that marks her as different from lay people. Illness was perceived differently in the Middle Ages than it is today. In her text, Words, Stones, and Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England, Louise Bishop writes “health in the Middle Ages concerned more than the body: ‘Because doctors of the body wish to help the sick, first they consider the health of their souls’”(1).50 Indeed, the First Corpus Compendium, a medieval receptaria of remedies suggests a remedy for when “For euele in pe bodyi” (Hunt 117). Julian’s soul is likely perceived as a healthy soul as she receives visions, thus medical interation did not need to consider the health of her soul. Still, it is important to note that her confessor was present at her bedside during her illness ostensible in case her soul needed some healing. Illness, for Julian is “‘a “social text’: Something at least partly created by the densely interwoven network of experiences and interpretations we bring to it” (Bishop 6). The experiences she has in her world help to shape the way she, and those around her perceived illness. As a woman who was devout, it is unlikely that Julian’s illness would have been perceived as something for punishment. 50 Ex causa infirmitatis colunt labere medicos corporum, prius sibi consultant de salute animarum suarum” (Canon 11 of the Council of Worcester, 1229, quoted and translated in Stell 1996, 5). ( Bishop, Louise 1)  106 VII. Beyond Rhetoric: Possibilities for Julian’s Text Another function of pain in Julian’s text, besides the authority it gives her as a rhetor, is that it works as a catalyst for prayer and reflection perhaps for both her and her readers. According to Roselyn Rey in The History of Pain, it is “probable that [western] Christians viewed pain as both a form of Divine retribution or as a sign of having been especially chosen, and as such, deserving of rewards in the hereafter…” (48). Rey’s understanding of pain accurately describes how Julian’s writing works for prayer and contemplation since Julian did see her illness as being chosen by God and the pain from that as a reward. Further, Faye Getz in Medicine in the Middle Ages argues, “The power of Christ and the saints to heal the sick as a manifestation of divine power was widely believed in by every level of medieval English society” (91). This belief is integral to how Julian might have used pain as a transformative force in her writing. While illness could be healed by calling on divine powers, sickness could also be invoked as evidence of divine favor. For Julian, the pain she has invoked serves two functions. First, it allows Julian to have deep reflection on the Passion of Christ. Second, it gives Julian, as an author, space to advance her theological position without threatening the larger authority of the Church. Indeed Janzten affirms this in her text by noting “Julian, therefore, aligns herself with the teaching of the Church in spite of her sorrow at its current practice” (98). In addition to reflecting on the Passion, Julian is able to use pain as a spring-board for her theological position; therefore, it is necessary to discuss how she constructs her own identity as a medieval religious woman.51 While it is not possible to overly 51 Cate Gunn, in Ancrene Wisse:From Pastoral Literature to Vernacular Spirituatlity (Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2008) writes “The story of the women’s religious movement is not a simple one, nor, indeed, is it the story of a single movement: temptations to present a single narrative must be resisted in favour of considering individual cases.”  107 determine what a medieval religious woman is, there seems to have been a tradition of religious women and women in general, garnering their own authority in the ways that they identify themselves. In multiple instances, Julian appears quite conscious in her self-construction and demonstrates awareness both of her self and of the rhetorical conventions of her time. In a manner similar to that of other medieval writers, Julian begins her second chapter by referring to herself as “a simple creature that cowde no letter” (3). For Julian, as a religious woman, this self-positioning is especially important. By referring to herself as “a simple creature” Julian attempts to position herself as one who would be incapable of preaching or teaching, thus removing herself from the censure of church officials.52 If Julian, like Margery Kempe nearly 50 years later, had been suspected of preaching, the climate of the fourteenth century church would have forced her removal. By rhetorically creating herself as simple and unlettered, and by authorizing her visions through her endurance of pain, Julian is one step closer to successfully developing her own theology and her own subjectivity.53 Though Julian is moving towards theology and subjectivity, readers can see Julian’s use of the rhetoric of desire as a way that she can move forward her revelations. Furthermore, readers can see how Julian’s use of language falls into existing rhetorical 52 There is evidence to suggest that late revisions to Julian’s text (by Julian) removing scriptural passages were perhaps done because of Arundel’s Constitutions prohibiting unlicensed laity from preaching. Specifically the first Article of Constitutions states “We will and command, ordain and decree: That no manner of person secular of regular, being authorized to preach by the laws now prescribed, or licensed by special privilege, shall take upon him the office of preaching the word of God [. . .] in English [. . .]. Quoted in Nicolas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409” Speculum 70 (1995): (822). 53 As Cheryl Glenn points out in Rhetoric Retold one of the main things that Julian establishes rhetorically is a theology “her listening audience could readily understand” (98).  108 tropes popular in the Middle Ages. There were a number of rhetorical structures available and Julian avails herself of these by using them as she negotiates the spaces of both woman and mystic. Julian’s knowledge of these structures clearly shows her familiarity with scholastic rhetoric as it was practiced. Further, from the structure of her writing, it appears that Julian might have had some familiarity with the writing of Robert Basevorn in The Form of Preaching either from reading it or through hearing regular sermons which may have followed the traditions that Basevorn outlines in his text.54 Basevorn, in The Form of Preaching outlines a number of ways to approach preaching and grounds these in Augustine, Gregory and Bernard. While Basevorn adopts the popular view of the thematic sermon, one grounded in scripture, this is not where Julian is imitating his practice. Instead, Julian’s knowledge of the tropes of preaching appears to follow the methods that Basevorn suggests as ornamentation of a sermon.55 As a woman, Julian would not have been able to preach without making waves within her community and makes explicit her desire not to be seen as a teacher/preacher. One version of her short text56 yields the following passage where Julian makes certain her position as a woman in her era: Botte god for bede that ye schulde saye or take it so that I am a techere for I meene nought soo, no I mente nevere so. For I am woman, leued, febille &freyll. Bott I wate wele this that I saye; I hafe it of the schewynge of 54 Baker suggests that her text “discloses her familiarity with the typical sequence of spiritual progress articulated in popular treatises and handbooks about meditation (25). 55 Basevorn identifies twenty-two ornaments of sermons, or which fifteen could be easily translated into a written work. Murphy notes that “A careful reader can find in Basevorn virtually every element we have seen in the development of the ars praedicandi” (343-344). Thus, it is reasonable to assert that Basevorn serves as a culmination of “best practice” in preaching after 1200. Of the ornamentations that Basevorn discusess, there are four that Julian seems to grapple with in her text: Introduction, Statement of Parts, Amplification, and Digression. 56 MS Additional 37790, fols 100v-101r.  109 hym thas es soverayne techare…and behalde Jhesu that ys techare of alle. (Crompton 66) Kerby-Fulton declares that this omission shows that Julian “is extremely well informed about the theological arguments supporting female teaching, or even preaching- arguments usually discreetly buries in Latin scholastic discussions, and not well advertised to the laity” (35). Kerby-Fulton notes that the omission of this passage harkens to Julian’s new carefulness about Wycliffism; yet it also demonstrates a clear familiarity with the recommended sermon structure, and with the canon of arrangement in her description of nearly ever revelation. One place where this is evident is within Julian’s ninth revelation. Basevorn suggests that an Introduction “can come from something original, from a philosopher, a poet, or someone with authority” (155) thus, Julian has already constructed herself, by Chapter XXXVII as someone with authority- god ordained authority and as something original, her revelation. She writes “The ninth Revelation is of the lekyng etc., of three Hevyns, and the infinte love of Criste, desire every day to suffer for us, if He myght, althow it is not needful”57 (66); thus, Julian establishes where she is headed with her revelation and has successfully introduced it to the reader through her authority. Moving to Statement of Parts, Basevorn writes that this should show “the distinction of parts either in a way by which the parts of a whole are distinguished, or also of an universal whole, or in some other way which clearly shows some distinction of parts” (162). Again, Julian is capable of doing this. In the description of her revelation she writes “In this feling my understandyng was lefted up into heaven, and ther I saw thre hevens. Of which sight I was gretly mervelyed” (195). Then, Julian moves to break down the parts that she is about to discuss. She moves 57 Again, not in Watson and Jenkins, pg. 66 in Crampton.  110 through each of the heavens and then into the words spoken to her by Jesus. Basevorn identifies eight methods of amplification: interpretation, division, argumentation, concordance, comparison, metaphor, and by expounding on a theme “historically, allegorically, morally, or anagogically” (183). Clear in Julian’s writing is that she chooses to amplify by interpretation, as she tells readers how to understand her revelations: “Than meneth he thus: How shulde it than be that I shulde not for thy love do all that I might…” (67), and also through division as she continues to break her ideas down into smaller parts. Finally, in Julian the reader encounters Digression, which according to Basevorn is, “a certain skillful connecting of two principal statements, namely a transition from one principal statement to another” (186). For Julian, this occurs at the end of nearly every chapter, in the ninth revelation she moves to her next idea by writing “And herein, I saw a fulle blisse in Crist, for his blisse shuld not have ben fulel if it migth ony better have ben done than it was done” (197). While Julian does not make use of all 22 ornaments suggested in The Form of Preaching, her use of some of them in multiple places in her text suggests that as much as she did not want to be seen as a preacher that she was still relying on the dominant form of preaching to construct her argument about her own revelations. Being seen as a teacher of holy writ could have been damning for Julian.58 As an anchoress, it was important that she not position herself as trying to teach through her writing because of the repercussions this might have for her, such as being labeled a Lollard. Indeed, the Ancrene Wisse, author warns his readers that “Ancre ne schal nawt 58 See Catherine Innes-Parker. “Subversion and Conformity in Julian's Revelation: Authority, Vision and the Motherhood of God” Mystics Quarterly 23 (1997): 7-35. Also, Alcuin Blamires "Women and Preaching in Medieval Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Saints' Lives” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 26 (1995):135-152.  111 forwurthe scol-meistre, ne turnen ancre-hus to childrene scole. . . . ah ancre ne ah butte God ane,” warning his readers not to become teachers of children nor to turn their minds to anything but God. As an author, however, Julian’s retelling of what she sees as “holy” visions provides her with significant, indeed, divine, authority for discussing a specific position. This is especially potent in two instances of the text, the example of the lord/servant59 that she puts forward to illustrate the relationship between Christ and humans and the theological positioning of God as Mother. Julian tells readers that during her visions, in a moment of doubt, she asked for guidance and received it in the form of “a marvelous example of a lord and a servent.” Julian also makes a point of telling that “it was nere twenty yeres after ere she full understode this example.” Interestingly, this is one of the major revisions from Julian’s short text. Her long text, written twenty years post-revelations was, according to Georgia Crampton, “the results of a long concentration upon the visions” (2). This added episode is written as a fully developed allegory. Still, without Julian’s initial design of herself as being able to receive “revelations” readers would not have access to this stylized allegory. Julian’s development of the Lord/servant allergory leads directly into her portrayal of Christ as “Moder.”60 While this would not have been an unusual move in medieval theology, Julian’s development of this idea is thorough and focuses on the way 59 For a useful discussion of this parable see M.L. Del Mastro. “Julian of Norwich: Parable of the Lord and Servant Radical Orthodoxy” Mystics Quarterly 14 (1988): 84-93. 60 Scholars have long worked on the idea of Jesus as Mother. To name a few see: Caroline Walker-Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, (Berkeley: U of California P, 1982); Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Felicity Riddy, "'Women Talking About the Things of God': A Late Medieval Sub-culture." Women and Literature in Britain, 1150-1500 Ed. Carol M. Meale. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996). 104-127. Sara McNamer, “The Exploratory Image God as Mother in Julian or Norwich’s Revelatons of Divine Love” Mystics Quarterly 15 (1989): 21-28. And Jennifer P. Heimmel "'God is Our Mother': Julian of Norwich and the Medieval Image of Feminine Divinity."  112 “Moder Jesus” nourishes body and soul. This falls within Julian’s initial illness and is one of her first fifteen revelations. Pain comes into play in this section of text as Jesus tells Julian: Sodeynly thou shalte be taken from all thy paine, from alle thy sicknes, from all thy disese, and fro alle thy wo.… And thou shalte never more have no manner of paine, no manner of sicknes, no manner of misliking, no wanting of wille, but ever joye and blisse withouten ende. (323) The promise from Christ to absolve all pain is glossed by Julian as a rationalization that “we take oure abidings and oure dissses as lightely as we may take them and set hem at nought. For the lightlier we take hem and the less price that we set at them for love, the lesse paine shall we have in the feeling of them, and the more thanke and mede shal we have for them” (327). This need to ignore pain, and instead look to God in illness is integral to how Julian casts her understanding of the divine to readers. She has, in a sense, achieved absolution as she was receiving her revelations. Furthermore, Julian discusses the goodness of her God when she writes: Alle other dredes He setteth them among passions and bodely sekenes and imaginations. And therefore though we be in so much paine, wo, and disese that us thinkith we can thinke right nought but that we are in or that we feele, as soone as we may, passe we lightly over, and set we it at nowte. (329) Thus, Julian encourages readers to seek God in meekness and not think greatly of themselves. Julian wants a kindlier existence and understanding of God and encourages this through her theological perspective. Many scholars assert that Julian’s theological  113 position was not entirely radical, while others ascertain that that she made digressions from the main position of the church.61 I concur with those who note Julian’s digressions but who reason that these digressions are seemingly allowed because she constructs her identity not as a mere woman suffering through pain, but as a religious figure whose suffering allows her an openness to divine grace. Pain, is crucial in her showings. Julian desires physical pain, through “divine” intervention, resisting the havoc it could wreck on her body. Instead, she embraces spiritual and emotional pain that allows her access to a contemplative realm and translates into her ability to author A Revelation of Love. Carolyn Walker- Bynum’s 1995 article, “Why All the Fuss About the Body: A Medievalist’s Perspective,” urged scholars to reflect on the body not solely as philosophical concept but to also remember the “Stuff” of the body. Since then, countless scholars have taken up questions about the body in medieval literature. To continue to “read” bodies provides us with valuable insights into understanding them. We need to look at Julian’s use of her body both through a theoretical lens and as the “stuff” that it is in her text. Julian uses her body as text in a unique move for a mystic. Body is less physically present in Julian’s writing, than it is in writings by other medieval female mystics,62 but the fact that her body still causes her to encounter various struggles 61 Nicholas Watson writes frequently about how Julian is not radical. See Nicholas Watson, “Visions of inclusion: Universal salvation and vernacular theology in pre-reformation England” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 154-183. For radical reads of Julian see Gerald F. Downing, “Theological Breadth, Interconnection, Tradition, and Gender: Hildegard, Hadewijch, and Julian Today” Anglican Theological Review 86.3 (2004): 423-450; or Grace Jantzen Julian of Norwich: Mystic and Theologican (New York: Paulist Press, 2000); or see Beverly Lanzetta, Radical Wisdom: A Feminist Mystical Theology (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2005). 62 Indeed, continental mysticism is far more about the body then Julian’s writing is. For further discussion of this see Elizabeth Petroff, Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (New York: Oxford UP, 1994) and Ulrike Wiethaus, Maps of Flesh and Light: the Religious Experience of Medieval Women Mystics (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1993).  114 forces it to be textually present. Reading Revelation for connections between desire, erotic language and physical body help to further examine the way that Julian rhetorically connects pain and desire. Here, it is useful to return to the theories of Elizabeth Grosz to work through the connections of language, pain and desire. The body is the negation or denial of the mind, an unruly and disruptive entity according to Grosz. Additionally, Grosz posits that physical interior of the body is established through social inscriptions of bodily processes; in other words, the mind is constructed to fit the social meanings of the body. Grosz explains surface tension on the body. The interplay between skin, and society happens where the surfaces of the body articulate, where the integrity of the body’s surface is torn, thus becoming a point for the exchange of social meaning. In other words, when body meets world, often, the body is often marked (as we will see with Margery Kempe and her weeping and clothing in the next chapter) and through these marks, social meaning is exchanged. It is at these points of exchange that we can use the body to speak about the erotic investments prevalent from these fissures. Pain plays a role in the way that the body becomes a surface for inscription. Grosz describes bodies as being created through memory/pain. Within bodies, pain becomes a “medium of exchange, currency” (38). Additionally, pain forces the body to become an inscriptive surface. Grosz uses as a metaphor the story of Kafka’s “Punishment Machine,” as a tool that etches the sentence into the body and eventually kills the body. In this instance, the body, and the inscriptions on the body have replaced speech and forms of verbal communication. This  115 replacement is evident in Julian’s text, as her body is rewritten with her visions inscribing it by her illness and three wounds. Grosz, and Michel de Certeau are useful in explaining the function of the body in mysticism. Bodies—flesh and blood, tissue and muscle -- come first; they exist pre- signification and well before inscription. Julian’s body is signified through self-elected enclosure, and of inscriptions upon flesh. Part of what creates Julian’s body is her enclosure as an anchoress. Although we know that she did not receive her visions while an anchoress, her writing of them while she was a solitary certainly impacted the way her own body was constructed in her texts. Understanding how Grosz further articulates the body as an inscriptive surface helps us to see how this is important in Julian’s text: “The metaphorics of body writing posits the body, and particularly its epidermic surface, muscular-skeletal frame, ligaments, joints, blood vessels, and internal organs as corporeal surfaces, the blank page on which engraving, graffiti, tattooing, or inscription can take place” (117). In Revelation, Julian’s body literally becomes inscribed with stigmata. Using Grosz’s model, without the evidence of fleshly markings, Julian, an anchoress in her own right, may not have been accepted as a visionary. Indeed, the body and word in tandem are what allows mystics to create and define their bodies as rhetorical spaces and articulate their authority. In The Mystic Fable Michel de Certeau asserts that between the 13th and 17th centuries there was an increased eroticization of the body—especially of women’s bodies—among “mystics.” Citing the changing world, its hostility and the increased advances in technology in the society, Certeau believes that for mystics the body began to replace the word; it became a stand-in for language.  116 There is, however, another way to explore Certeau’s idea: while the body was certainly another way for mystics to express their language, it is premature to think that a mystical body was a stand-in for the word. What Certeau finds through his study of continental mystics is that when words are written in unreadable messages on the body the spoken word remains outside of the body while remaining indecipherable. In other words, both the spoken and written word for Certeau are not understandable. However, when language is decipherable, the erotic discourse searches for words to bring the images of the mystics to fruition. At the crux of how mystic’s use language is the idea of rapture and rhetoric and the way these are aligned linguistically on the mystic body. Certeau writes “Rature and rhetoric: these two apparently contradictory practices are related to what language became [. . .] allowing for the progressive separation that took place between an unknown absolute of the divine will and a technician’s freedom, capable of manipulating words that are no longer anchored in being” (29-30). In other words, the rapture that some mystics experience during visions is expressed as written on the body. For Certeau, the relation of masculine and feminine makes a difference in the way the body articulates its rhetoric. Additionally, Certeau believes that the mystical body is something that is produced – purposefully by the mystic, through pain, pleasure and perception. The body becomes the center of these three events and is combined with the social practices of communication as well as the symbolic discourse that organizes the mystics’ stories. This makes sense in Julian’s text. Julian tells her readers that she “desired before thre giftes by the grace of God . . . mind of the passion . . . bodily sicknes . . . [and] Godes gift thre woundes” (125). These three “gifts” which she desires all come to her, and as they come to her she is pulled into  117 a “mystical state” through the revelations. Julian even accomplishes her desire “to be soone with my God,” although she finds God through her revelations, not through the death. In Chapter XXXIII desire again shifts Julian’s position: “And yit in this I desyered as I durste that I might have had full sight of hel and of purgatory” (225). In this instance, the word does not physically move Julian because she is already in the middle of her revelations, but it does spur her understanding of the revelations she has experienced. The underlying force of Julian’s work is in her language. Without her ability to articulate in writing what she experienced, it seems like Julian would not have achieved her mystical state recognized publically regardless of how her body acts. Julian makes meaning through language. The written physicality of Julian’s mysticism is fundamental to how she is structuring her revelations. Most male mystics in the medieval period did not call attention to their physical bodies; thus, their mysticism remained primarily spiritual.63 As Bynum-Walker points out in “The Female Body and Religious Practices in the Later Middle Ages”: Spiritualities of male and female mystics were different and this difference has something to do with the bodies. Women were more apt to somatize religious experience and to write in intense bodily metaphors; women mystics were more likely than men to receive graphically physical visions of God; both men and women were inclined to attribute to women and encourage in them intense asceticisms and ecstasies. (194) Julian, by recognizing and discussing her body, forces readers to see the connections between the physical world and the spiritual world.  118 Desire in connection with the body works on two levels for Julian. First, it serves to gain divine sanction, but it also functions on an erotic level. An early connection between body, pain, and desire is found at the point of Julian’s sickness. In the third chapter, Julian first calls attention to her physical body. She writes: “And when I was thirty yeres old and a halfe, God sent me a bodily sicknes in which I ley three days and three nightes” (129). Julian locates herself in the physical world before inviting the reader to explore her revelations. The manifestation of her “sicknes” is what makes her visions permissible thus using the sickness to help construct her authority as a writer/mystic, but also showing the reader her body. By calling attention to her body Julian reminds readers that she is human, although she is about to relate mystical experiences. Julian continues, “and on the third night I wened oftentimes to have passed, and so wened they that were with me; and, and yet in this I felt a great louthsomenes to die, but for nothing that was in earth that me liked to live for, ne for no paine that I was afraid of (131). Here Julian does not separate her physical body and her spiritual activities; in fact, the physical body and suspicion of pain is an integral part of her mysticism. Pain becomes linked with erotic images in Julian’s text. In Chapter II, Julian talks of the “three wounds in her life” that she desired. She names these as “the wound of very contrition, the wound of kind compassion, and the wound of wifull longing to God” (129). Julian identifies these wounds as non-physical, or perhaps “psychic” wounds, she states “that my body might be fulfilled with mind and feeling of His blessed passion, as I had before prayed. For I would that his paines were my paines, with compassion, and afterward, langing to God” (133). By locating her body as a nexus for pain and pleasure,  119 as an erotic surface, Julian applies this “physical” language to the spiritual realm. Consequently, Julian ends up writing mystical language onto her literal body by desiring to share in Christ’s crucifixion pain. This forces readers to recognize Julian’s authority as she is able to identify with Christ through both bodily pain and mental anguish. Karma Lochrie reads the physical bodies of medieval female mystics in a way that aptly describes Julian’s position: "woman, then, occupies the border between body and soul, the fissure through which constant assault on the body may be conducted and a painful reminder of the influx that maintains the division between body and soul" (Lochrie 122). Julian’s body is constantly “assaulted” in Revelation so that, though a division remains between her body and her soul, her body remains the locus for pain, and it is pain that allows Julian to rewrite her self and her authority. An additional connection between pain and erotic language occurs in Chapter LXXII. Julian writes: “The most contrarious that are is the highest blesse and the deppest paine” (347). Thus, highest bliss is the state that a contemplative wants to obtain as opposed to deep pain which manifests itself in “oure deadely [mortal] flesh” (347). Julian continues to explain how this pain is caused and states “This weping meneth not all in poring out of teeres by oure bodely eye, but also to more gostely understanding” (140). Again, Julian’s spiritual experiences manifest themselves on the physical body. The rhetoric that Julian creates in A Revelation of Love has firm grounding in the tradition of affective piety. She is certainly not the first mystic to have visions that involve desire and divine authority.64 What makes Julian different is that she creates a 64 Continental contemporary of Julian, Catherine of Siena, uses the same strategies as evidenced in an early modern translation of her Dialogues. The Orchard of Syon. Ed. P. Hodgson and G. Liegey (Oxford: Oxford UP for the Early English Text Society, 1966). Later, Teresa of Avila also employes these strategies in her writing.  120 rhetoric of pain and desire that did not previously exist. As the first female mystic to write in the vernacular, she establishes for her audience that there is a link between desire and physical experience, and demonstrates that pain becomes a sanctified method for achieving a oneness with God. As women were not usually expected to have desire, Julian’s writing desire, then, becomes something acceptable, and even necessary for women to have. Julian has advanced the beginnings of a rhetoric that was evident in Rolle’s writing. As Rolle grounded readers in the fire of love as a reward for achieving contemplation, Julian furthers this suggesting that pain is actually one pathway to this reward.  121 Chapter 3: Margery Kempe: Corporeal Commodity: Desire, Pain, and Subversive Suffering I have cause to be ryth mery and glad in my sowle that I may any thing suffyr for hys lofe… —Margery Kempe In many ways, Margery Kempe's work represents an amalgamation of Richard and Julian’s merging of pain and desire. Implicit in her work are their teachings. However, because of her singular position as a lay-woman, she is able to proselytize and experiment far outside of the control of the institution of the church, though the church repeatedly attempts to bring her under its auspices and, more importantly, its control. The didactism of Margery comes in the performativity and commodification of her body. Margery’s body is the rhetorical construct that pushes the relationship between pain, desire, and suffering even further by remaining on the fringe of acceptable practices. Margery's body is not corporeal become divine; instead, her body is a commodity to gain the union she desires with the divine. I. Introduction and Background For as much interest as scholars have sustained in Julian of Norwich, the scholarship on Margery Kempe is broader and more fascinating. In contrast to the dearth of biographical information on Julian of Norwich, we know quite a bit about Margery  122 Kempe65 (1373-1438). Kempe grew up in a wealthy family, but lacked formal education. She married John Kempe around 1393 and had 14 children. Nearly twenty years later, Kempe made journeyed extensively to a variety of popular pilgrimage locales, including Jerusalem. Scholarship on Margery is far reaching and encompasses a number of disciplinary approaches. Feminist scholars have chosen Margery as a champion for medieval feminism and as an icon for the woman writer. While Julian is often referenced in medieval feminist literature she is more respected for her theological perspective. Margery is referenced for her individual voice. Psychoanalysts turn to her as evidence of medieval mental illness.66 More recently, there is sustained interest in the production of Kempe’s Booke, both in terms of authorship and circulation. Of the scholars working on medieval reading and writing, Karma Lochrie in Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh and Rebecca Krug in Reading Families Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England, concur, that women’s writing is a transgressive act; however, Krug also notes that “on a broad cultural level medieval women were discouraged from interaction with the written word” (4). Although this discouragement existed, Kempe still authored a book; one of the many things that makes her a fruitful subject for study. The newest iteration of Kempe scholarship focuses on performance, an important 65 For a reading of Margery Kempe as a medieval exemplar see Raymond Powell, “Margery Kempe: an Exemplar of Late Medieval Piety” Catholic Historical Review 89 (2003): 1-23. Further see the entry by Felicity Riddy in the online Oxford Dictionary of National Bibliography. 66 Stanley Hussey writes of Kempe scholarship: “For R.W. Chambers in his Introduction to the Butler- Bowden modernization, she is a ‘difficult and morbid religious enthusiast.’ She was too emotional for Dom. David Knowles when compared with the austerity of the Cloud author, or even Hilton. In his opinion she is undoubtedly sincere, charitable, and when she can be checked accurate, but exhibits a ‘strong exhibitions streak in her nature, and an absence of depth in the alleged spiritual communications’ […]Riehle see ‘pathologically neurotic traits, Colledge and Walsh a ‘morbid self-engrossment’ “ (178). Hussey continues, “Margery inevitable comes off worse in comparisons, explicit or implicit, with Julian-if only she had stayed put“ (178).  123 addition to the understanding of rhetorical authority. Denis Renevey, in “Margery’s Performing Body: The Translations of Late Medieval Discursive Religious Practices” believes that Margery “offered her body as reading material” (199) and that her “body is the initial book” (209). Unlike Julian’s body as the story of the Passion, where her body becomes merely a receptacle in some was for the pain of the Passion, Margery’s body re- lives the Passion as a witness. Finally, the extensive work of Lynn Staley in Margery Kempe: Dissenting Fictions, is fundamental in entering the contemporary conversation regarding Margery Kempe arguing that “Kempe, like Chaucer, with some of whose works I would guess she was familiar, used the literary tradition to which she was heir as well as the world around her to compose fiction” (xii). Staley aids contemporary readers understand how Margery was “a figure who understood the meaing of and thus the need to assert mastery over communal literary codes” (xii-xiii). For my study of Kempe’s text, knowing how she understood her self and the world around her is important in understanding the context of her book. The Book of Margery Kempe offers a different perspective on pain, desire and rhetoric than Julian’s Revelations. Where Julian and Rolle offered readers a way to contemplation through desire and pain and were integral in creating a rhetoric that would allow them to do so, The Book of Margery Kempe, allows Margery to shift her subject position from a merchant’s wife to a religious visionary. In Margery’s text, pain functions similarly to Julian’s Showings because it allows for a shift in subjectivity; however, it is different because Margery is not functioning within the sanctioned religious establishment. Like her contemporaries, Margery existed within the Christian community; yet, she was able to resist the distaste the community had for her. As she  124 struggled against orthodoxy and blatant misogyny, she elevated herself as a visionary mystic. The methods by which Margery engages, describes, and designs her use of pain are vastly different from the strategies Julian employs. Where Julian’s body was often marked by what she believed to be God, Margery marks her own body. Margery’s subjectivity is slightly different than Julian’s as her body must be active in the public world. Unlike Julian, Margery, as a laywoman, was not contained inside a religious order (or more to the point, within a cell) and therefore ecclesiastical authorities were largely unable to regulate the type of interactions that Margery had with the secular world. This rift becomes evident in the examinations that she endures at the hands of church officials: And þan a-non, aftyr Erchebischop put to hir þe Articles of owr Feyth, to þe whech God af hir grace to answeryn wel & trewly and redily wyth- owtyn any gret stody so þat he myth not blamyn hir, than he seyd to þe clerkys, “Sche knowith hir Feyth wel a-now. What xal I don wyth hir?” The clerkys seyden, “We knowyn wel þat sche can the Articles of þe Feith, but we wil not suffyr hir to dwellyn a-mong vs, for þe pepil hath gret feyth in hir dalyawnce, and perauentur sche myth pereurtyn summe of hem.” (125) The anxiety that the church demonstrates about Margery’s subversive ability within her social realm is evident. Although she is consistently found to be strong in her recitation of faith, it is automatically assumed that she might hold some sway away from the church for those who come into contact with her. Because this fear of Margery’s power exists, and because Margery appears to have been somewhat knowledgeable about the fact that she caused “trouble,” the ways that Margery constructs her authority is tantamount in her  125 ability to use her body defensively. Though she is still contested as a visionary by those scholars who prefer to categorize her as hysterical, she uses her body as a commodity with means to gain authority among the men with whom she interacts and thus, she gains authority within the church. Additionally, she rhetorically structures her “self,” into, as Cheryl Glenn suggests, three versions of Margery Kempe: an author, a character, and an historic individual.67 Margery’s text is, indeed, far more corporeal than Julian’s, and what must be taken away from Margery’s work, is, as Elizabeth Robertson notes in Early English Devotional Prose and the Female Audience that “in female writing, blood and tears and the like are central to the contemplative experience because of their reflection of the perceived nature of women” (149), yet this can also be construted not just as the nature of women, but perhaps as a conscious rhetorical strategy. If we think about how Aristotle characterized good ethos- as someone displaying intelligence, good moral character and having good will- then Margery, as a woman is in a bind. As a woman, Margery was not supposed to be, as Robertson reminds us, intelligent or knowledgeable. Therefore, Margery’s conscious use of tears as rhetorical strategy is fitting. Furthermore, using descriptive language that details bodily inscriptions, Margery is able to successfully construct herself as a woman, a writer, and a mystic. 67 See Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity through the Renaissance, (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1997). Particularly Chapter 3, 103-109.  126 II. The Production of the Book The Book of Margery Kempe “testifies to the dangers and difficulties of female authorship at a time when the Church was anxious to control an increasingly literate laity, and where women in particular were the object of a vernacular devotional literature that attempted to channel, construct, and constrain feminine spirituality” (Beckwith 197). Even though numerous scholars of Kempe have already explored the production of Kempe’s text, it is necessary to revisit this here,68 since understanding the dichotomy of Kempe the author and Margery the narrator is tantamount to my argument about Kempe’s rhetorical construction. Most readers understand that The Book of Margery Kempe was penned by a scribe; however, questions remain about how the exchange between author and text should be explained. As Lynn Staley notes in her extensive study of Margery Kempe: The subject of medieval scribes is bound up with the question of textual authority. Scribes not only left their marks upon the manuscripts they copied; they also functioned as interpreters, editing and consequently altering the meaning of texts. Writers, however, did not simply employ 68 For more complete versions of this discussion see the following recent publications Watson, Nicholas. “The Making of The Book of Margery Kempe” Voices in Dialogue Ed. Linda Olsen and Kathryn Kerby- Fulton. (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2005), 394-435; Felicity Riddy, “Text and Self in The Book of Margery Kempe” ibid 435-453; Kelly Parsons, “The Red Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempe and His Lay Audience” The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower. Ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Maidie Hilmo. (Victoria: U of Victoria P, 2001). 143-216; Lynn Staley, Ed, The Book of Margery Kempe: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism (New York: Norton, 2001); Cheryl Glenn, “Reexamining The Book of Margery Kempe: A Rhetoric of Authority” Relcaiming Rhetorica: Women and the Rhetorical Tradition Ed. Andrea Lunsford. (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, )53-71; and the older text: Janet M. Mueller. “Autobiography of a new ‘creatur’. Female Spirituality Selfhood and Authorship in the Book of Margery Kempe” Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Ed. Mary Beth Rose. (Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1986). 155-171.  127 scribes as copyists, they elaborated upon the figurative language associated with the book as a symbol and put scribes to another use by incorporating them into their texts as tropes. Such ghostly scribes provided authors with figures through which they could project authorial personas, indicate what we would call generic categories, express sense of community or guide a reader’s response to a text. (112) It seems logical then, based on Staley’s analysis of scribal textuality to read the scribe as integral to Kempe’s text as both the medium of transposition and as a marker of text. While it might be tempting to think of the scribe as a composer or a text, here, it is most useful to treat the scribe not as the composer, but as the intermediary between Kempe, the auctor, and her reading audience. Staley further argues: it is less important to ascertain whether Kempe was actually illiterate and therefore dictated her book to a scribe than to see to understand what function the scribe serves in her book . . . it is likely she exerted a good deal of control over the text itself; either she wrote it herself and created a fictional scribe, or she had it read back to her and was aware of exactly what was in the text. (33) Staley asserts that Kempe essentially maintained control of her text even through a scribe displays a sense of strategy in undertaking her “composition” of the Book. Indeed, the scribe functions “as key to authorial strategy and design” (36). Cheryl Glenn offers further support surrounding the production of Margery’s text: both lay men and women alike heard about texts they probably had not read, listened to texts they perhaps could not read, composed texts they  128 probably could not themselves write, and talked about text that they had in some measure committed to memory. Theirs was a literacy based on texts rather than depended on texts as is the case with our modern documentary literacies. (57-58) Glenn is careful to lay out the distinction between writing, a largely physical act that was mainly controlled by the literati vs composing, a process that could be done by anyone. This distinction, and the idea that composing could be done by an “uneducated” individual, is necessary to understand the context for the production of Kempe’s book. Wendy Harding, author of “Body into Text: The Book of Margery Kempe” notes that Kempe lacks the disembodied nature that is so often found in the writings of the mystics, and further suggests that readers of Margery might overlook her spiritual quest in favor of reading her corporeal body. However, it is the corporeal body that makes Margery compelling, not because it is so prevalent in her text, but because it is integral to her spiritual quest. Harding believes that Margery plays a useful foil to Julian because Julian’s text does not contain the same amount of corporeality that we find in Margery’s writing. She ascertains: The Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich contains very few references to the writers material existence it focuses instead on the visions of infinity granted to Julian in the space of a single night. . . .The physical dimensions seem to disappear in Julian’s book while a visionary topography opens. In moving the narrative focus from the woman’s body to the body of Christ, from the present to infinity, Julian’s text is legitimized in a way that Margery’s is not. (180)  129 While Harding examines Julian and Margery as opposites in the realm of women’s mysticism, the similarity in their texts is obvious because both women are forced to construct their bodies through the texts that they author. In the case of Julian and Margery, it is the subject positioning, either as laywoman or religious woman that seems to determine whether they are bodily or spiritually focused in the the construction of their bodies. Readers do read Margery’s body because the presentation of the body in this text is absolutely necessary as the writer so often functions from outside the grace of God/church/society rather than from within a protected shell of visions. III. Marking Margery: The Performing Self Margery’s body is often a location for performances linking Margery’s authority and self-expression, as Renevey suggests. These performative moments in her texts- moments of physical, and often somewhat theatrical performance, serve to locate Margery as a marked body in her realm.69 To read Margery against Julian allows readers to comparatively explore the phenomenon of female-bodied mystics. What separates Margery’s body from those around her is her experience as a pilgrim and a penitent. Margery’s body is frequently constituted by what Grosz describes as voluntary and temporary markings. Margery’s body is both a priori of social practices while being the material that is responsible for generating social practice; she not only becomes a tablet on which desire 69 For further discussion on Margery and performance see: Sheila Christie, “‘Thei stodyn upon stolys for to beheldyn hir’ Margery Kempe and the Power of Perfomance” Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 38 (2002): 93- 103. Nanda Hopenwasswer, “A Performance Artist and her Performance Text: Margery Kempe on Tour” Performance and Transformation New Approaches to Late Medieval Spirituality, Ed. M. Suydam and J. Ziegler (New York: St. Martins, 1999); Carole Mead “‘This is a deed bok, the t’other a quick’: Theatre and the Drama of Salvation in the Book of Margery Kempe” Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain. Ed. Jocelyn Wogan Brown et al. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000). 29-67.  130 and pain can be written, but also, exemplifies how desire and pain should be physically enacted in the secular world. One major contribution that Margery makes to this project is that she makes pain and desire accessible in a secular context; however, she also instructs readers about how to mark their own bodies. Typically, the bodies of mystics, especially the bodies of female mystics are marked in both voluntary and temporary ways. Mystics are often marked when they request markings as a testament that God recognizes them; these markings are temporary because they disappear after the “mystical” experience ends.70 As demonstrated in Chapter 2, Julian requests and receives illness and “wounds” from God. Through these markings she is able to construct her authority as a writer, and from God’s willingness to choose her to mark. Margery, in contrast creates her own readable text on her body. These marked moments allow Margery to perform her body in public ways. Margery has a radical body. Her desires are often written on her body through the “gifts” of tears that she receives as they often allow her to “be” within the presence of God, as her tears are always sanctioned by divinity. These moments of crying and tears happen with great frequency throughout her text, because as Kempe says “þis maner of crying enduryd þe terme of x zer” (140). One instance where tears allow Margery to be present with God occurs when: sche behelde wyth hir gostly eye in þe syght of hir sowle as verily as þei sche had seyn hys precyows body betyn, scorgyd, & crucifyed wyth hir bodily eye, whech syght & gostly beheldyng wrowt be grace so feruently in hir mende, wowndyng hir wyth pite and compassion, that sche sobbyd, 70 Such is the case in Julian’s text, where she is ill for a short duration and well during her vision. This is also the case with Angelina Foligno, “The Book of Divine Consolation” and Catherine of Siena’s Orchard of Syon.  131 roryd, & cryed, and spredyng hir armys abrood, seyd wyth lowed voys, “I dey, I dey.” (140) Thus, her contemplation on the Passion71 places her in the presence of God, and the weeping and sobbing garner attention for her from those in church. As she tells us, “Than a preyst toke hir in hys armys and bar hir in-to þe Priowrys Cloistyr for to latyn hir takyn þe eyr, supposing sche schle not ellys han enduryd” (140). Through Margery’s moments of weeping and crying, Kempe is able to create a character who writes herself into the very public discourse of not only the mass, but of the Good Friday service. Unlike an anchoress who would be viewing mass from her anchorhold, literally, closed off from the masses seeing the mass, Margery becomes an embodiment of a Good Friday mourner of Christ’s Passion. Another way that Margery marks her body is through bodily denial. Margery shows this type of marking three times within the first 400 lines of her Booke: after the birth of her child, when hearing heavenly music, and during her three years of temptation. Margery “gaf hir gret fasting & to gret waking,” and when she would go to 2am or 3am prayer, she withstood being “slawnderyd and reprevyd” by townspeople and she “weryd the hayr euery day” (12). She is careful to tell her readers that the result of these bodily denials is that she feels no temptations: “Sche felt no rebehllion in hyr flesch. Sche was strong, as hir thowt, þat sche dred no devylle in elle, for sche dede so gret bodyly penawnce” (13). Margery repeats this sentiment again: & et sche was oftyn schrevyn, sche weryd þe hayr, and dede gret bodyly penawns, & wept many a byttyr teer & preyd ful oftyn to owyr Lord þat he 71 For an excellent reading of Margery and the Passion see Sarah Beckwith, “A Very Material Mysticism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery Kempe” Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, and History. Ed. David Aers. (New York: St.Martin’s Press, 1986). 34-57.  132 schuld preserue hir & kepe hir þat sche schuld not fallyn into temptacyon, for sche thowt sche had levar ben deed þan consentyn þerto. (14) Kempe inflicts her own marks on her body in the beginning of the text because of her need to continually do “bodily penances” manifesting as a visible map of holiness on her body. Without the divine affinity that Julian was able to construct through her desiresfor pain and illness from God, Margery must rely on this self-marking. Thus she is forced to mark her own body in ways that the hegemonic society can read as holy; she seeks chastity in her marriage, sanctions to fast, and dons the clothing of a religious woman. Trangressing the boundaries from married secular woman to religious woman, these activities lead her to have a publicly religious body. Clearly more interested in the way her outward presentation explicates her social status than in the ways that her religious persona exists, Kempe writes “whan þis creatur was þus gracyowsly comen a-geyn to hir mende, sche thowt sche was bowndyn to God & þat sche wold ben his seruawnt” (9). Margery continues in her quest for social status through her clothing: And et sche wyst ful wel þat men seyden hir ful mech velany, for sche weryd gold pypys on hir hevyd & hir hodys wyth þe typettys were dagyd. Hir clokys also wer daggyd and leyd wyth dyvers colowrs be-twen the daggys þat is schuld be the mor staryng to mennys sygth and hir-self þe more ben worshepd. (9) Dressing in a way that does not befit either her actual social status with her husband, or her newfound religious identity Margery has again marked her body as outside the realm of acceptability. According to the social laws of her time, Margery is dressed above the  133 class to which she belonged. Additionally, as someone who has decided that she is devoted to God, she is not yet ready to give off the material trappings of a well-to-do woman. Lack of modesty in regards to Margery’s appearance extends even to her exclamation that “Sche had ful greet envye at her neybowrs þat þei schuld ben arayd so wel as sche” (9), as she attempts to induce jealousy from neighbors; again, not befitting of a religious woman. Indeed, we certainly could not imagine Julian making any statements of a similar sort. Beyond physical marking, her material desires range far beyond her desire for clothing. She also attempts to start her own business out of “pure coveytyse & for to maynten hir pride” (9) and she is “tempted” with a threatened rape by a man where she “At þe last thorw inoportunyte of temptacyon & lakkyng of dyscrecyon sche was ouyrcomyn, & consentyd in hir mend, and went to þe man to wetyn yf he wold þan consentyn to hire” (15). Thus throughout the early part of the text Margery vacillates in her rhetorical figurations of herself as a holy woman while also succumbing to her material desires. This is evident in her text, as she asserts “many men seyd sche was a fals ypocryte & wept for þe the world for socowr & for worldy good” (13). Margery, throughout the early chapters of her book then locates herself outside the realm of social control in clothing, sexuality and business, thus making a rhetorical move to show how dramatically her experience with the world changes once she “finds” religion. Indeed, in the proem, her scribe notes “Her werdly goodys, whech wer plentyouws and abundawnt at þat day, in lytel while after wer ful bareyn and bare,” (2) to demonstrate how non- worldly Margery became.  134 Margery resides in an almost wholly material world, far different than the space that Julian occupied. Margery is not located within a religious community even in the way that Julian was marginally located in one.72 She clearly situates herself well-outside the realms of religious control which is part of what makes her such a contentious figure in ecclesiastical history. As someone who is outside of the religious community, Margery is perceived by the established religion as being far more of a sinner than Julian. Indeed, in the beginning of her text she blatantly expresses her material desires clearly asserting that though understanding her bond to God, “sche wold not leevyn hir pride ne hir pompows aray that sche had vsyd be-for-tym, neiþyr for hyr husband ne for noon oþer mannys cownsel” (9). Margery’s performances are convincing in that they allow her to construct her body as readable text. She makes her body readable through her weeping and tearing at her skin, and through her clothing. Through this text, Margery creates her own rhetorical identity through desire, pain and suffering. IV. Pain and Suffering in Margery The scourge for Margery’s early materialism lies in the infliction and reception of varying amounts of pain. As Margery’s desire for material goods wanes, it is replaced by a desire for a spiritual connection, and pain becomes proof of her commitment to God as well as an instigator of change for Margery’s life. Margery invokes both emotional and physical pain throughout her text. Emotional pain allows Margery to strengthen her alignment to spiritual figures, namely Christ and Mary. Physical pain often allows her to further her commitment to spiritual life and prove herself worthy of a divine union with 72 Julian, as an anchoress, was essentially sanctioned as part of the religious community, even if she wasn’t a member of a religious order. See Ann K. Warren, Anchorites and their Patrons, (Berkeley: U of California P, 1985). Margery remains almost wholly outside that sanctioning.  135 God. However, in Margery’s text such compelling evidence of her ability to devote herself to purely spiritual matters is rare. More often, physical and emotional pain in The Book are tightly intertwined, because of Margery’s desires thus creating scenes where Margery is both suffering from mental and spiritual anguish while encountering physical symptoms of pain and suffering. One of the most evident places of this dual suffering is during Margery’s pregnancies. McAvoy posits Margery’s treatment of motherhood as “an adept performative strategy which is at the same time both validatory and liberating” (51). A recurring theme in Margery’s text is that readers meet her as a woman who is recently post-partum. Margery connects and responds to a very female type of pain, childbirth: “And aftyr þat sche had conceived, sche was labowrd wyth grett accessys tyl þe child was born, & þan, what for labowr sche had in chyldyng & for sekenesse goyng beforn, sche dyspered of hyr lyfe, wenyng sche mygth not leuyn.” (6). Margery suffers through labor, birth, and post-partum life and she despairs of her life, wishing to die. Suffering from pregnancy spurs Margery to send for her priest, and eventually leads her to Jesus “clad in a mantyl of purpyl sylke, syttyng up-on hir beddys side” (8). Thus, early in Margery’s text there is a clear connection that suffering will bring God to her. More importantly, and interestingly, it is Margery’s connection to God through her own ability to bring life into the world.73 In this moment, Margery’s understanding of pain comes from her position as a mother. Another pregnancy occurs midway through the (non-linear) text when Jesus informs Margery that she “art wyth childe” (48). In this instance, Margery doesn’t suffer 73 Liz Herbert McAvoy suggests that Christ’s appearance here “serves to stablize [Margery] in that it offers an exit-route from the prison in which she finds herself” (38).  136 bodily, but explains her spiritual anguish: “Lord, I am not worthy to heryn þe spekyn & þus to comown wyth myn husbond. Ner-þe-less it is to me gret peyn & gret dysese” (48). Spiritual anguish allows Margery to engage in a dialogue with Christ as he tells her that “I lofe wyfes also, and special þo wyfys whech woldyn levyn chast, yyf þei mygtyn have her wyl” (49). Again, God is nearby throughout Margery’s spiritual anguish and this connection is forged through her subject position as a mother. Through this suffering, Margery has received dispensation for having marital relations with her husband, and Christ tells her that he will love her just as much as he loves virgins. By creating a connection between pregnancy and pain, Margery manages to develop pathos in her writing as she offers a connection that other women might be familiar with. Whereas Julian’s writings can only be considered as oddly foreign experiences to most women, Margery’s forging a union with God through her maternal body is a site of commonality. Margery suggests that through the body, one can become one with God, a powerful and disturbingly radical notion that unbalances the traditional gender roles and authority within the church. Furthering Margery’s experience with pain and suffering, are moments where she identifies with the pietá. Yoshikawa believes that the moments of meditation on the Virgin Mary add rhetorical structure to Kempe’s text. 74 However, beyond structure and as a rhetorical strategy, these moments allow Margery to forge her identification as a follower of Christ and as a friend/companion to the Virgin Mary. Like Julian, Margery is trying to connect with her readers through these identifications; however, unlike Julian, Margery’s identification are more corporeal based and less seated in the mind. In these 74 See Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa, “The Role of the Virgin Mary and the Structure of Meditation in The Book of Margery Kempe” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England Ed. Marion Glasscoe. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1999). 169-192.  137 moments, Margery’s suffering is mainly emotional rather than physical. Sarah Beckwith, in her text Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval England, explains that Kempe’s text: returns repeatedly to the moments of Christ’s birth and death, and sometimes, as in her contemplation of the pietá, that image which depicts Christ dying in the arms of this mother, where birth and death coalesce. Having then been present at, indeed having aided in, the very parturition of Christ as a baby, she becomes most interested in him at the moment of his death, his crucifixion. This is where her identification is at its most literal and empowered. (81) While suffering in this instance, Margery is forging a strong identification with the Virgin Mary.75 Kempe writes: “& sithyn sche cam to owr Lady and fel down on hir kneys beforn hir, seying to hir, ‘I prey yow, Lady, cesyth of yowr sorwyng, for yowr sone is ded and owt of peyne, for me thynkyth ye han sorwyd a-now. & Lady, I will sorwe for yow, for yowr sorwe is my sorwe’ (193). By offering to take on Mary’s sorrow and pain, Margery is heightening her suffering, aligning herself with Mary, and at the same time, she reinforces her identification as a lover of Christ: “gretly desyryng to an had þe precyows body be hirself alone þat sche myth a wept a-now in presens of þat precyows body, for hir thowt þat sche wolde a deyid wyth wepyng and mornyn in hys deth for loue þat sche had to hym” (194). Beyond the Passion, Margery identifies with Mary during her own childhood and at the birth of Christ. In Chapter 6, Kempe writes about Margery being a servant to St. Anne, being present at the birth of Mary, and infact raising her as 75 For more on Margery’s identification with the Virgin Mary see Alexandra Barrett. “Spiritual Virgin to Virgin Mother: Confessions of Margery Kempe” Paregon 17.1 (1999): 9-44.  138 St. Anne told her to “take þe child to hir and kepe it tyl it wer twelve yer of age wyth good mete and drynke, wyth fayr white clothys and white kerchys” (18). Margery is later present at the birth of Christ: “whan Jhesu was born, sche ordeyned bedding for owyr Lady to lyg in wyth hir blyssed Sone” (19). Still later, Mary appears to her and extends to her the blessing of “dowtyr.” Positioning herself as servant, mother, midwife, and daughter, Margery enables her own identification with the roles that were available to women throughout her era; thus, her readers could identify in many of the ways that Margery does. Furthermore, Margery suggests that her path is one other women might follow, creating a distinctly feminine pathway to the Divine. At the same time, however, Margery creates a paradox by developing her own identity through paralleling with Mary and a presumed closeness with Christ. In this way, Margery separates herself from those around her, while showing her reader scenes that they might already be familiar with. Thus, Margery’s divine connection and different penitent acts remove her from her readers so that Kempe is able to maintain a sense of authority as a writer/rhetor. There are numerous other moments in the text where Margery is in an almost constant state of psychological distress; however, this distress shifts rapidly from psychological pain to a form of physical pain for her. In one instance related to her sexual duties as a married woman, she writes “And in al þis tyme sche had no lust to comown wyth hir husbond, but it was very peynful & horrybyl unto hir” (14).76 Other instances of her psychological unrest are also based on dealing with the opposite sex, “And, yyf sche sey a semly man, sche had gret peyn to lokyn on hym les than sche myth a seyn hym that 76 For further discussion of Margery and sexuality see Peter Pellegrin, “‘I wold pou wer closyd in a hows of ston’”: Sexuality and Lay Sanctity in The Book of Margery Kempe.” Lay Sanctity, Medieval and Modern: A Search for Models Ed. Ann Astell. (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2001). 91-105.  139 was bothe God and man” (86). These psychological improprieties force Margery to engage in rhetorical self-fashioning where she regularly tries to outmaneuver the men she is dealing with. Her psychological torment extends to her contemplation of the world and this causes her some amount of psychic pain. Because of her psychological pain her body begins to manifest pain in physical ways, such as through her tears and her hysterics as noted earlier. The psychological pain that Margery experiences adds to her oddball status within the Lynn community. Pain for Margery, like it did for Julian, serves the purpose of creating a distinction for her. In this case, it is separating her from the rest of the worshippers in her community. In the separation that Margery is experiencing from pain she is essentially separating her external world (or her community) and her interior self; as Butler posits: “What constitutes through division the “inner” and “outer” worlds of the subject is a border and boundary tenuously maintained for the purposes of social regulation and control” (Gender 170). This separation from her fellow churchgoers further moves her to be open to both “mystical experience” and manifestations of physical/psychic distress: sche had so hy contemplacyon & so meche dalyawns of owr Lord, in-as- meche as sche was putte owt of chirche for hys lofe, that sche cryed what tyme sche schulde ben howselyd as ʒyf hir sowle and hir body xulde a partyd a-sundyr, so that tweyn men heldyn hir in her armys tyl hir cryng was cesyd. (138) Margery’s physical separation from those in her larger community causes her to cry out as if her body and soul should be parted, in other words, as if she was dying. Margery’s body becomes a site for physical restraint at a moment of physical pain. Margery’s  140 physical pain becomes a moment for “the public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body” helps Margery to create her own identity. (Gender 173). Margery’s body then becomes inscribed in multiple ways on multiple levels as “the figure of the interior soul understood as “within” the body is signified through its inscription on the body, even though its primary mode of signification is through its very absence, its potent invisibility. (Gender 172). Unlike Julian, who saw pain as a gift from God, Margery does not desire pain as an indication of divine benevolence. Much of Margery’s pain occurs when she is being tormented/tested by demons or is self-inflicted by biting at her flesh, tearing her skin and attempting suicide, all while being kept under guard. For Margery, this kind of pain and sickness—distinctly different than the pain of childbirth—comes from devils and demons not from a Christian God: And also þe develys cryed up-on hir wyth greet thretyngys and bodyn hir sche schuld forsake hir Crystendam, hir feyth, and denyin hir God, hys modyr, and alle the seyntys in Hevun, hyr goode werkys and alle good vertues, hir fadyr, hyr modyr, and alle hire frendys. And so sche dede. (7) Early in Margery’s narrative, she is “tempted” by the devil. Her physical pain and suffering at the hands of demons absolve her from responsibilities while at the same time it allows her to construct herself as a tortured body. This self-construction is necessary as it ensures that Margery will find herself in need of penance and forgiveness. In the scene directly following her calling for her priest in her pregnancy, her mental torment causes her to engage in acts of physical self-abuse. Margery further self- inflicts pain when:  141 Sche wold a fordon hir-self many a tym at her steryngys & a ben damnyd wyth hem in Helle, & into wytnesse þerof sche bot hir owen hand so vyolently þat it was seen al hir lyfe aftyr. And also sche roof hir skyn on hir body a-gen hir hert wyth hir nayles spetowsly, for sche had noon other instrumentys, and wers sche wold a don saf sche was bowndyn and kept wyth strength boþe day and nygth that sche mygth not have hir wylle. (8) These actions, tearing her skin and causing permanent damage to her hand from biting are all sufficient self-inflicted injuries to bring God to her bedside: “owyr mercyful Lord Crist Ihesus, […] aperyd to hys creatur” (8). Like Julian, Margery also seeks relief from personal pain through divine power. In Margery’s case it’s clear that someone needs to protect her from herself, and thus from the pain that she might inflict upon herself. Margery’s masochistic tendencies create a self that is in need of protection. While she wants that protection to come from the “most semly, most bewtyuows, and most amyable” (8) Christ, it more frequently comes in the form of regulation by those around her. The regulation of Margery’s body by the men around her informs readers’ understandings of how Kempe sees Margery in relation to other women.77 She is regulated in a number of different situations. The men, Margery’s scribes, her husband, and other ecclesiastical authorities repeatedly attempt to force her body and her mind to conform to the norms that they want followed. First, there is the regulation of her book, and Margery’s body is so closely associated with her book that this bears noticing. 77 Wendy Harding in “Body into Text: The Book of Margery Kempe briefly discusses how men “discipline” Margery’s body. She writes “we find men attempting to discipline Margery’s body, using threats, insults, or sexual harassment in order to assert masculine power and remind her of her secondary status” (181); however, Harding does not discuss how this discipline, or in my case regulation, allow Margery to construct her own body.  142 Without the bodily displays that Margery performed, her book surely would never have been written. Thus, her first encounter with a scribe ends in failure: Than was þer so evel spekyng of þis creatur and of hir wepyng that the prest durst not for cowardyse speke wyth her but seldom, ne not wold wryten as he had be-hestyd vn-to the forseyd creatur. & so he voided & deferryd þe wrytyng of þis boke wel onto a iiij yer or ellys mor, not-wyth- standyng þe creatur cryed often on hym þerfor. At þe last heseyd onto hir þat he cowd not redyn it, where-for he wold not do it. (4) Thus regulation of Margery starts with the regulation of her book. Her story is regulated by a priest who fears being involved in Kempe’s authorship. Further moments of regulation occur through Margery’s husband. This is most obvious in her imputations of marital rape: “He wold have hys wylle, & sche obeyd wyth greet wepyng & sorwyng for þat sche myght not levyn chast” (12), and in his request of her to “etyn and drynkyn wyth me on þe Fryday as ye wer wont to don” (24). Finally, there are countless moments of religious regulation of Margery’s body, and these come from both “God” and church authorities. One episode that bears significance is again around Margery’s desire to wear the white mantel and the ring. She is bidden through Christ to “were clothys of whyte and nonn other colowr,” and is eventually granted permission to do so through a series of regulatory moments. Another episode is her encounter with the Archbishop of York, Henry Bowet who “comawndyd hys mene to fettyn a peyr of feterys & seyd sche xulde ben feteryd, for sche was a fals heretyke” (124). The regulation of Margery’s body by men in her book allow readers to see Margery create and recreate herself as an authority and as a holy woman who repeatedly does the bidding of God at her own peril.  143 In her text, it is the story of this temptation that leads her to redemption by the Christian God who restores her to “reason,” she writes “And a-noon þe creature was stabelyd in hir wyttys & in hir reson as wel as evyr sche was be-forn” (8). At the moment Margery stabilizes psychologically, she is able to remove some of the physical duress from her body as she begins to eat and drink normally and generally return to the realm of Lynn society. Other incidents of bodily pain are also self-inflicted in Margery’s text. In most chapters, she is punishing herself with “gret bodely penawnce” in order to be ablated of her sins. Among these self -inflicted punishments are “gret fasting, gret wakyng” secretly wearing a hair shirt, and being schriven frequently (sometimes two or three times per day). Again, Margery’s body is being regulated through pain—and in the case of penance—it is always self-inflicted, though ostensibly divinely directed. Margery’s actions, both cause pain and allow her to submit her body to pain inflicted by others upon her. Her individual pains are also gifts for her, as they were for Julian. When Margery does encounter pain from God, she does not always see it as a gift, as it was for Julian, but rather as a punishment. In a long passage, she details over eight years of pain and suffering, where she faces death multiple times. She writes: Afftyrward God ponyschyd hir wyth many gret & divers sekenes. Sche had the flyx a long tyme tyl sche was anoyntyd, wenyng to a be deed. Sche was so febyl þat sche myth not heldyn a spon in hir hand. Than owr Lord Jhesu Crist spak to hir in hir sowle & seyd that sche schulde not dey yet. þan sche recuryd agen a lytyl while. And a-non aftyr sche had a gret sekenes in hir heuyd and sithyn in hir bakke þat sche feryd to a lost hir  144 witte therthorw. Aftyrwarde, whan sche was recuryd of alle thes sekenessys, in schort tyme folwyd an other sekenes whech was sett in hir ryth syde, duryng the terme of eight y er, saf eight wokys, be divers tymes. Sumtyme sche had it onys in a weke contunyng sumtyme xxx owrys, sumtyme xx, sumtyme x, sumtyme viij, sumtyme iiij, and sumtyme ij, so hard & so scharp that sche must voydyn that was in hir stomak as bittyr as it had ben galle, neythyr etyng ne drynkyng whil the sekenes enduryd but evyr gronyng tyl it was gon. (137) These very real, very physical ailments that Margery suffers are relieved when she begs to not die and Christ grants that desire. So Margery is both punished and redeemed by God through this illness. During these illnesses Margery contemplates: þan wolde sche sey to owr Lorde, “ A blysful Lord, why woldist þu be- comyn man and suffyr so meche peyne for my synnes & for alle mennys synnes þat xal be savyd, & we arn so unkende, Lord, to þe, and I, most vnworthy, can not suffyr þis lityl peyne? A, Lord, for thy gret peyn have mercy on my lityl peyne; for þe gret peyne þat þu suffredyst gef me not so meche as I am worthy, for I may not beryn so meche as I am worthy.” (137) Contemplation regarding the writer’s self-worth is not out of place in medieval texts and is evident in texts of other mystics not included in this study.78 Julian uses contemplation on the Passion in Revelation, but she does not compare her pain to it. Indeed, many medieval religious individuals use this rhetorical strategy and contemplate the smallness of their own physical pain in relation to the suffering of Christ during the crucifixion and 78 This is evident in Catherine of Sienna’s Orchard of Syon.  145 often come to the same conclusion as Margery “And, yyf þu wilte, Lord, that I ber it, sende me pacyens, for ellys I may not suffyr it” (137). Margery’s inscription of her body from both her ability to verbalize the corporeal pain that she feels and from the way she performs this pain. In Margery’s text, pain does not defy language. Where Julian, at times, is brought to the point of wordlessness in her ability to describe her pain, Margery immerses herself in the description of pain. She expresses her pain through language and also allows her language to focus the pain rather than mask it. Even if her moments of pain aren’t created through language, they are at least describable. Kempe explains them to her scribe: þan sche fel down and cryed wyth lowde voys, wondyrfully turnyng and wrestyng hir body on every syde, spredyng hir armys abrode as yf sche schulde a deyd, & not cowde kepyn hir fro crying, and þese bodily mevyngys for þe fyer of lofe that brent so fervently in hir sowle wyth pur pyté and compassion. (70) Expressions and descriptions of pain are most obvious in Margery’s intensely embodied moments as demonstrated above.79 It is the tumult of pain added to the mystical “fire of love” that induces Margery’s ability to verbally express what she is feeling. Further enjoining Margery to the larger mystical experience while also allowing her some level of verbal expression is her reception of the “flawme of fyer wondir hoot and delectably & ryth comfortably, nowt wasting but evyr incresyng, of lowe, for, thow 79 For other discussion of Margery and the hysterical moments of her text see Richard Lawes “The Madness of Margery Kempe” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, Ireland and Wales, Ed. Marion Glascoe, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1999) and Richard Lawes, “Psychological disorder and the autobiographical impulse in Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve.” Writing Religious Women: Female Spirituality and Textual Practices Ed. Denis Renevey and Christiana Whitehead. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2000) 217-243. Also see Julia Long, “Mysticism and Hysteria: The Histories of Margery Kempe and Anna O” Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect. Ed. Leslie Johnson and Ruth Evans. (New York: Routledlge, 1994). 88-111.  146 þe wedyr was nevyr so colde, sche felt þe hete brennyng in hir brest & at hir hert, as verily as a man schuld felyn þe material fyer ʒyf he put hys hand or hys finger þerin” (88). Clearly, this is Margery’s reception of the Holy Spirit, thus authorizing her as someone who is worthy of recognition by the divine. Beyond this recognition though, it is Margery locating herself both within the existing tradition of affective piety and also using pain to sanctify her experience. The notion of the “fyre of lowe” is found throughout the tradition of affective piety, and is developed quite fully by Richard Rolle. Margery is clearly familiar with this tradition.80 Only in one instance does pain become indescribable for Margery, and that is in an instance when it’s not clear whether she is reticent on this point, or the scribe she describes it to is unable to capture her language: “Sche was schrevyn & dede al þat sche myth, but sche fonde no relesyng tyl sche was ner at dispeyr. It can not be wretyn þat peyn þat sche felt & þe sorwe that sche was inne” (145). Even at a moment where she (or her scribe) refuses to articulate pain in writing, it is still pain that defines her experience. Pain becomes concrete for Margery when it is used as a form of punishment from God. Because of her hesitation to believe that God has not forsaken her “God chastisyd þe on þis wise & maner, and þis chastisyng schal enduryn xij days” (145-146). After her twelve days of pain, she tries to beg for reprieve. She states “I wold not, Lord, for al þis world suffryn swech an other peyne as I have suffryd þes xij days, for me thowt I was in 80 Denis Renevey, “Margery’s Performing Body: The Translation of Late Medieval Discursive Religious Practices” Writing Religious Women: Female Spirituality and Textual Practices Ed. Denis Renevey and Christiana Whitehead. (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2000) 197-216 writes “she was familiar with “the tradition of mediation on the events of Christ’s life through Rolle’s Meditations on the Passion and the Stiulius amoris which were read to her. (204). Kempe writes “He red to hir many a good boke of hy contemplacyon and other bokys, as the Bybl wyth doctowrys thereupon, Seynt Brydys boke, Hyltons boke, Boneventure, Stimulis Amoris, Incendium Amoris, and swech other” (141). Kempe continues in explaining how a priest came to understand her that “He red also of Richard Hampol, hermyte, in Incendio Amoris leche mater that mevyd hym to gevyn credents to the sayd creatur” (150).  147 helle, blyssed mote þu be þat it is passyd” (146). It is the torment of physical pain that Margery describes which returns her to God. In Margery’s mind her body and spirit were separated; it is her actual articulation of pain that helps to reunite body and spirit in her search for communication with God. Margery’s body, when it is in pain, is under duress from demons or physical penances. Margery’s illustrates Scarry’s theory of bodies being tormented by outside influences. Yet each time Margery articulates this pain, it is resolved through divine intervention. Pain is also something to be alleviated through divine intervention for Margery. After having a beam and rock fall on her in a church she explains that when she called “Ihesu Christ” her pain was gone and she was “mech merveylyng & gretly awonderyd þat sche felt no peyn and had felt so mech a lytyl befor. Ne txij wekys aftyr sche felt no peyne. Than the spiryt of God seyd to hir sowle, "Helde þis for a gret myracle, and, ʒyf the pepyl wyl not levyn this, I schal werkyn meche mor” (22). Not only does God intervene in relieving Margery of her bodily pain, he actually prevents her pain, any pain from recurring for 12 weeks. Pain for Margery—or more to the point, the manifestations of pain through tears and hysterics— allows Margery to cultivate her authority as a religious visionary and to access religious authorities. This is evident throughout Margery’s text as she seeks approval from a variety of male authorities. One instance of this occurs in Chapter 32, as Richard, a “broke- bakkyd” Irish man she meets on her journey, pleads Margery’s case with a priest: Than Richard went to þe person & enformyd hym of þiscreatur, and how owyr Lord gaf hir contricyon and compunccyon wyth gret plenté of teerys,  148 & how sche desired to be howseld every Sonday yyf sche myth & sche had no preste to be schrevyn to. And þan þe person, heryng of hir contricyon and compunccyon, was ryth glad & bad sche sxulde come to hym in þe name of Jhesu and sey hir Confiteor, and he xulde howseln hire hys owyn self, for he cowde not vndyrstond non Englysch. (80-81) The frequency with which Margery encounters either acceptance or rejection from religious authorities shapes her mystical practice. She uses her body as a commodity depending upon how it will serve her situation. Kempe defines her own rhetoric through Margery’s pain. In writing rhetoric through Margery’s body, Kempe is able to develop an authoritative voice both for herself and for Margery, her created character. Pain is a concrete sensation for Margery that frequently gets morphed into psychological pain and vice versa-when it isn’t physical, it’s psychological and is then physically manifested. At the same time, Margery desires and rejects pain. She understands that pain is a gift from God; however, she doesn’t always actively desire it unlike Julian who did actively desire pain. V. Margery’s Rhetoric: Desire, Pain, and the Passion In “The Power of Discourse and the Subordination of the Feminine,” Luce Irigary81 discusses the ways that women’s language and women’s writing can challenge existing discourse, as we see Margery do throughout her text. This becomes useful in considering the ways that female mystics are read within the psychoanalytic tradition, where a woman’s desire is often contingent upon a dependent relationship with a man. Lisa Manter connects Margery’s desire to the gaze. She writes: 81 See also Sarah Beckwith “A Very Material Mysticism: The Medieval Mysticism of Margery Kempe.”  149 By refusing to adopt one of the prescribed female roles—wife or cloistered religious—and by insisting on preserving her autonomy Margery increases the threat of physical domination of her body by men. To obtain the male object of her desire, she must position herself as the passive object of the male gaze. Further more she is hindered from actively pursuing her object of desire by her lack of a penis. Because female desire cannot enforce it’s gaze through social or biological power, the woman as spectator must therefore envision herself as both the bearer of the look and the recipient of the gaze of her desired object. In order to accomplish this double-vision, she must instill the object of her desire with the necessary subjectivity to perceiver her as the object of desire. (56) Manter’s assertion, that Margery is hindered by her lack of a penis in fulfilling her own desire, can be subverted by how Margery receives the holy spirit. While one could insist that a mystic’s desire for union with God is the ultimate dependency upon a man, what one does not always articulate are the ways in which the body of the female mystic flips this dependency on the phallus and reestablishes the “Holy Spirit” as a phallus, thus queering completely the binary system. If for women, desire stems from touching rather than looking, as it does for men, women have a different geography of pleasure. The exclusion of the female imaginary by definition puts women in a position of experiencing self-fragmentation and becoming aware of desire as secret. Where Julian’s use of pain shifts her subjectivity, Margery uses pain to construct her body and identity. What works to shift Margery’s subjectivity is actual desire rather than pain; this moves Margery into a mystical position. Although she is less obvious in  150 her use of the word desire than Julian (I desire), Margery “prays,” “beggyns,” and “desyrs” throughout her text. Desire allows Margery to shift her subject position between lay woman and mystic. Margery’s desire becomes intriguing when she connects it to “I” statements, which happen infrequently in the extensive dialogue recorded in The Book. One case of this occurs when she asks Christ “Alasse, Lord, how long xal I wepyn & mornyn for thy lofe & for desyr of thy presens?” (176), in the same chapter she further confesses her desire to kiss lepers. She writes: þan was sche glad, for sche had leve to kyssyn þe seke women and went to a place wher seke women dwellyd whech wer ryth ful of þe sekenes & fel down on hir kneys beforn hem, preyng hem þat sche myth kyssyn her mowth for þe lofe of Ihesu. And so sche kyssyd þer ij seke women with many an holy thowt & many a devowt teer, &, whan sche had kyssyd hem and telde hem ful many good wordys and steryd hem to mekenes and pacyens þat thei xulde not grutchyn wyth her sekenes but hyly thankyn God þerfor and þei xulde han gret blysse in hevyn thorw þe mercy of owr Lord Ihesu Crist. (177) Margery accomplishes two things in this statement. She expresses desire that allows her to move from a lay woman to a holy woman and takes it upon herself with pseudo- permission from a priest to administer “kisses” to sick women. Thus, through desire in this instance Margery essentially creates her own permission to undertake “holy work,” but this holy work becomes a subversion of the expectations for a holy woman; tending the sick is within the parameters of social acceptability, while kissing sick women feeds into Margery’s increasing understanding of desire as a pathway to God.  151 The rhetorical work of Kempe is evident in her construction of Margery as as character. And this construction mainly happens through bodily inscriptions. Both Margery and Julian use language to inscribe their bodies; however, where Julian does this subtly and through direct communication with God, Margery often uses an intermediary to help her body become inscribed. By inscribing her body through physical and socially readable markings, Margery manages to situate herself in the realm of religious obedience, a position wholly necessary if she is to effectively fulfill her desires. For Margery, this inscription is not always the bodily inscriptions that Julian receives, but occurs by how society constitutes her body. Grosz writes that the connections between body and text are close and the ways that the body becomes engraved all “constitute bodies in culturally specific ways. . . . The texts produced by this body writing construct bodies as networks of meaning and social significance, producing them as meaningful and functional “subjects” within social ensembles” (117). Readers find that in The Book of Margery Kempe, inscriptions on Margery’s creating her within society are those moments in her text concerning food, clothing, and sex. Having a chaste marriage is one of Margery’s most desired goals from early in her text. Indeed, as already illustrated, Margery’s husband attempts to regulate her body through sex. She resolves this situation after “consulting” with Jesus and being granted permission to renege on the Friday fast at her husband’s wishes. Margery tells her husband: Sere, yf it lyke ʒow, ʒe schal grawnt me my desyr, & ʒ e schal have ʒowr desyr. Grawntyth me that ʒe schal not komyn in my bed, & I grawnt ʒow to qwyte ʒowr dettys er I go to Ierusalem. And makyth my body fre to  152 God so þat ʒe nevyr make no chalengyng in me to askyn no dett of matrimony aftyr þis day whyl ye levyn, & I schal etyn and drynkyn on the Fryday at yowr byddyng. (24) By removing her body, a bargainable commodity, from her sexual duties, and promising to pay her husbands debts she gains autonomy and authority as a religious woman. Yet still, it is through language that she is able to make sense out of this moment and use it as a moment of bodily inscription. She agrees to eat in exchange for living chastely with her husband. The verbal pact that Margery makes with her husband enables her to mark her body (at Christ’s command) and she begins to wear white as if she is a consecrated virgin. The incidents regarding donning white clothing is a further moment when Margery’s desire to be religious is written on her body. Early in her text she is directed by Jesus to wear only white: “And, dowtyr, I sey to þe I wyl that þu were clothys of whyte and non other colowr, for þu xal ben arayd aftyr my wyl" (32). By wearing white clothing, Margery is hoping to be read as chaste laywoman. Thus, she is choosing to use language to combat society’s outlook on her. Whenever she is attempting to transform herself into the epitome of a proper religious woman, she is forced to first code her body as that of a proper woman before she is allowed to code herself as a proper religious woman, even though this outward guise doesn’t always allow her to meet her desires. The self-marking of her body functions to show Margery’s “real-time” audience of ecclesiastical authorities and townspeople how she has been inscribed by divine authority. Although this is not bodily marking of the same caliber that Julian endures, Margery’s self-marking becomes her key to entrance as a religious authority. Margery  153 wants to be seen as religious and thus, in conversation with God, decides “I xal weryn white clothys, þow all þe world schuld wondyr on me, for þi lofe” (76). She makes this change happen, though she knows that she might be mocked for this decision “And þan sche went and ordeynd hir white clothys & was clad all in white liche as sche was comawndyd for to do yerys be-forn in hir sowle be revelacyon, & now it was fulfilt in effect” (80). She changes these, at the behest of her confessor, for black clothes again. Thus, she always seems to be in obedience to someone in clerical power. This self- fashioned obedience plays itself out in the ways that Margery interacts repeatedly with church officials, her husband and her peers. Margery also uses bodily rhetoric during pilgrimages to further create a sense of self. She takes two major pilgrimages, one to Jerusalem,82 and the other to Rome, as well as a number of shorter pilgrimages around England. During these pilgrimages, she manages to always separate herself from the pilgrim company at large; first through her regular “spiritual” practices and later through her excessive crying. An early instance of where the separation occurs is in Chapter 26 where she “wepyd so mech & spak alwey of the lofe & goodnes of owyr Lord as wel at þe tabyl as in the oþer place” (61). Margery’s company is so irked by her because as she continues to travel with them, sche cam at Constawns wyth gret dissese & gret turbyl, for þei dedyn hir mech shame and mech reprefe as þei wentyn in dyvers placys. þey cuttyd hir gown so schort that it come but lytil benethyn hir kne & dedyn hir don on a whyte canwas in maner of a sekkyn gelle, for sche schuld ben holdyn 82 See Kristine T. Utterback “A Call to Active Devotion: Pilgrimages to Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages” Lay Sanctity: Medieval and Modern: A Search for Models. Ed. Ann Astell. (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame UP, 2000) 47-60.  154 a fool & þe pepyl schuld not makyn of hir ne han hir in reputacyon. þei madyn hir to syttyn at þe tabelys ende benethyn alle other þat sche durst ful evyl spekyn a word. (62) Thus as the pilgrim company forcibly marginalizes Margery, she in turn gains spiritual strength from the ostracism, essentially forcing the situation in her favor. Thus Margery, here, is performing rhetorically. She gains strength and uses that strength to her advantage. She attempts to stop crying for fear of reproof, but: whan þe body myth ne lengar enduryn þe gostly labowr but was ovyr come wyth þe unspekabyl lofe þat wrowt so fervently in the sowle, þan fel sche down and cryed wondyr lowde. And þe mor þat sche wolde labowryn to kepe it in er to put it a-wey, mech þe mor xulde sche cryen & þe mor lowder. (69-70) As Margery becomes overwrought through her excursions to holy places, she cries to align her spiritual/physical needs with those commemorated by the places she visits. Ellen Ross, in her article “‘She Wept and Cried Right Loud for Sorrow and For Pain’ Suffering, the Spiritual Journey and Women’s Experience in Late Medieval Mysticism” helps readers to understand this, stating that: Margery Kempe’s suffering of compassion also functions to deepen her understanding of Christ by leading her to reflect on Christ’s motivation in suffering for humans; this results eventually in a recognition of Christ’s love for humanity and in a perception of Christ’s divinity as well as humanity. (56-57)  155 It is Margery’s suffering that often lends itself to inscribe her body in the ways that Grosz identifies as socially marked. As she suffers, she visibly shows pain, love, and desire. Pain allows Margery to connect to readers. Her body shows that, through her pregnancies and marriage, she has suffered much as her readers might have. However, Carolyn Walker-Bynum writes “Margery strains desperately for liminality, strains for transition in status, for conversion, for escape from her normal role as ‘married women’ into the role, two hundred years old at least, of the mulier sancta” (44). Walker-Bynum is helpful in understanding how Margery is able to achieve divine connection through different penitential acts that remove her from her readers and allow her to maintain a sense of authority in her writing. A final way that Margery rhetorically uses her body is through her connection to the Passion of Christ that stems largely from reflection/recognition on Christ’s humanity that Margery is moved to consider. During her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, she provides readers with a skillful description of both Christ’s (imagined) crucifixion and her own response to it: Sche had so very contemplacyon in þe sygth of hir sowle as yf Crist had hangyn befor hir bodily eye in hys manhode. And, whan throw dispensacyon of the hy mercy of owyr sovereyn savyowr Crist Jhesu it was grawntd þis creatur to beholdyn so verily hys precyows tendyr body, alto rent & toryn wyth scorgys, mor ful of wowndys than evyr was duffehows of holys, hangyng upon þe cros wyth þe corown of þorn upon hys hevyd,hys blysful handys, hys tendyr fete nayled to þe hard tre, þe reverys of blood flowing owt plenteuowsly of every membr, þe gresly &  156 grevows wownde in hys precyows syde schedyng owt blood & watyr for hir lofe & hir salvacyon. (70) By carefully discussing what she sees in this vision, Margery is trying to ensure that her visions are aligned with what the current church would have sanctioned. The description is nearly devoid of Margery’s typically overblown emotion. However, in Margery’s description of Christ upon the cross at Calvalry she carefully details each of the injuries wrought on him before telling readers: sche fel down and cryed wyth lowde voys, wondyrfully turnyng and wrestyng hir body on every syde, spredyng hir armys a-brode as yyf sche schulde a deyd, and not cowde kepyn hir fro crying, and these bodily mevyngys for the fyer of lofe that brent so fervently in hir sowle wyth pur pyté and compassyon. (70) As Margery falls, twisting and weeping, she aligns herself with the existing rhetoric of mysticism, by alluding to the “fyer of lofe that brent so fervently in hir sowle,” as well as accessing divine authority, by noting “it was grawntd this creatur to beholdyn” the scene of Christ on the cross. Further, in her later contemplations of the Passion she becomes aligned with Mary and roots her physical suffering in a feminine version of the Passion. Beginning in Chapter 79, Margery places herself into the Passion story she “thowt sche toke owr Lord Ihesu Crist be þe clothys & fel down at hys feet, preyng hym to blissyn hir, and therwyth sche cryid ful lowde and wept rith sor” (189). Following this, Margery becomes Mary’s comfort throughout Christ’s ordeal. Indeed, in Margery’s version, she is the impetus for Mary following Christ throughout the Passion. Later in this version, Margery is the one who prepares a bed and a hot drink for Mary. Margery’s version of  157 the Passion allows her to create an individuated self, that for once, is not based on her own pain, or suffering, but instead focuses on that of Christ. She does, however, still manage to cast herself as the main character in this episode rather than as someone standing by on the sidelines. While Kempe’s mysticism is not as intellectually based as that of Richard Rolle or Julian of Norwich, she certainly earns a place within the fourteenth century mystical tradition. Margery’s use of her body, of clothing, and of her business pushes her personal desires to the forefront. Once she begins to perform as a holy woman, her personal desires become desire for God. Still, her body and her use of her body are what she uses as an exchange medium with the divine- by donning white clothing, by crying, and by engaging in other penitental yet subversive acts. As Margery bargains with her body to gain access to the spirituality she desperately desires, she helps to create a rhetoric of pain and desire that is wholly embodied in a physical and very complex human realm.  158 Chapter 4: Walter Hilton: Minding the Body: Conservative Pain and Desire Knowe that the cause of thy bodily enclosynge is that thu myght the betere come to goosteli enclosynge… -- Walter Hilton In a study on rhetorical authority, Walter Hilton offers the most substantive material for a direct consideration of rhetorical authority. In his work, he seeks to explicitly instruct, typically with phrases such as “I schal, I tel, or I sey” more than meditate on the relationship between pain and desire. In The Scale of Perfection, pain is incorporated into the rhetoric of a more conservative and pragmatic spiritual program than the visionary piety of Rolle, Julian or Margery. Yet his instruction manual in Scale 1, written for a prospective anchoress, much like Rolle’s Form of Living is a direct codification of women's behavior, (even if women like Julian and Margery stray from these guidelines) designed to ensure the attainment of the divine, while regulating the body. I. Introduction and Background Born around 1343, Hilton abandoned a secular law career to pursue orders. Hilton’s career in law enabled him to navigate the spiritual realm. J.P.H. Clark writes “after Arundel's translation to York in 1388, Hilton and others would have been instrumental in the policy of imposing rule and order upon an ‘enthusiastic’ piety that was influenced by the tradition of the hermit Richard Rolle (d. 1349), as well as in the  159 conflict with Lollardy,” therefore, Hilton’s legal expertise was useful. Hilton, like Julian of Norwich and Richard Rolle lived as a solitary contemplative for sometime, but he eventually joined the Augustinian Canons and died in 1396 serving as the canon of the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire. Hilton wrote a number of works ranging from short treatises to the longer work that is examined here, The Scale of Perfection.83 This text, like Julian’s Revelation exists in two versions, commonly referred to as Scale I and Scale 2. The time line for the completion of both of these texts ranges from about 1380 to 1396, the time of Hilton’s death.84 Book 1 of the Scale of Perfection is 92 chapters long and deals with different issues in cursory ways. Book 2 is far more developed and more coherent, and while only 34 chapters, it is still around 3100 lines and develops themes in more sustained way. While much of the scholarship regarding Hilton’s theology and his longer commentary85 on the situation of the church focuses on Book 2, Book I, a partial instruction manual to a potential female contemplative86 is most useful for this study. As an instruction manual, Hilton’s text codifies women’s behavior while also instructing them in contemplation and divine spiritual attainment. Like Rolle’s earlier text, The Form of Living, Hilton explains that in order to gain spiritual attainment one must spend extensive hours in contemplation and seeking union with God. 83 In English: On Mixed Life, Eight Chapters on Perfection, Of Angel’s Song, Qui habitat and additionally a number of Latin texts, namely letters, and possibly Bonum Est. 84 In his introduction to Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Bestul writes “A date range for the composition of the whole from about 1380 to Hilton’s death in 1396 seems reasonable” (2). He also cites Helen Gardner and Evelyn Underhill in conjunction with this timeline for Hilton’s writing. 86 There is little evidence here, about who this person might have been. It is noted that “Book 1 is addressed in the first instance to an anchoress, though whether she is a real or a notional figure is unclear; at the end of the book Hilton says that his words are intended for her or anyone else who is vowed to the contemplative life” (Clark and Dorward 19).  160 Helen Gardner notes that The Scale of Perfection was the first English mystical text in print.87 Thomas Bestul suggests that this text was popular in the late Middle Ages because of the large number of existing manuscripts. There are forty-two manuscripts that are extant with either Book I or with both books.88 Bestul and others also suggest that there was a fairly large readership for Hilton’s work beyond the anchoritic communities for which it was originally composed. Denise Baker marks The Scale of Perfection as the “preeminent Middle English work of spiritual advice” (40). This far- reaching readership of Hilton’s text shows a large popular interest in the tradition that he is advancing. Additionally, it suggests that the tradition of affective piety shifted from the time that Rolle wrote to the time in which Hilton is writing to add a more intellectual component of thought to affective practice and to limit the volatileness of the body. This is perhaps a partial attempt to reign in what church officials saw as out-of-control practices.89 Hilton was a contemporary of Julian of Norwich and wrote before Margery Kempe. Both Hilton and Julian derive their ideas from a foundation of Augustinian spirituality.90 However, while it would be logical to assume these two writers knew about each other, their ideas tend to “interrogate rather than affirm each other’s 87 According to Bestul “The Scale was printed by Wynken de Worde in 1494 and several times thereafter, and as Helen Gardner notes, it was the first English mystical work to appear in print” (7). 88 Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representation and Subjectivity in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1995) writes that “Several convents owned copies of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, including “Campsey Priory in Suffolk (Cambridge, Corpus Christi Coll., 268), Darford Priory in Kent (London, B.M Harley 2254), the London Abbey of Minoresses outside Aldgate (London, B.M. Harley 2397), Shaftesbury Abbey in Dorset (London, B.M. Add., 11748) and Syon Abbey in Middlesex (London, B.M. Harley 993; Oxford All Soul’s Coll,, 25; London B.M. Harley 2387; and Philadelphia, Rosenbach Foundation, Inc. H 491)” (8). Bartlett also notes that “the most popular devotional works among English monastic women were apparently Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and the Middle English reworkings of the Orologium sapientiae.” (9). 89 See Jonathan Hughes, Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1988). 90 Augustinian spirituality demonstrates a focus on the Trinity and on contemplation.  161 interpretation of the theology…” and Hilton provides a “more traditional recapitulation” of church doctrine than Julian (Baker 36). We already understand that Julian’s writing, while somewhat radical, was still contained within the confines of church doctrine. While Julian experimented with radical ideas such as God as the mother and her parable of the servant, as an anchoritic writer she was still careful to firmly situate her writing within the boundaries of theologically acceptable practices. Hilton, like Julian, “presents himself as an obedient representative of the sacramental church. He therefore advises his reader to seek to contain her devotions within the boundaries established by the church” (Watson 134).91 While there is little similarity between Hilton and Margery, it is evident that Margery knew of him as she refers to him in a catalogue of books she was familiar with along with the writing of St. Brigid, and Richard Rolle.92 Some scholars contend that designating Hilton as a mystic downplays the importance of his writing.93 Most of the very recent scholarship that does exist is primarily interested in manuscript issues or in commentary about Hilton’s place within the turbulent religious landscape of the fourteenth century.94 Slightly older scholarship 91 Hilton is writing during Thomas Arundel’s attack on Lollardy. Thus, it makes sense that his writing would urge caution in how one was expressing their contemplation. Clearly, accusations of heresy were common-as evidenced by the multiple times that Margery Kempe had to face them as she demonstrates in The Book of Margery Kempe. 92 “…and informyd hir in hir feyth and in hys lofe how sche schuld lofe hym, worshepyn hym, and dredyn hym, so excellently that sche herd nevyr boke, neythyr Hyltons boke, ne Bridis boke, ne Stimulus Amorys, ne Incendium Amoris, ne non other that evyr sche herd redyn that spak so hyly of lofe of God but that sche felt as hyly in werkyng in hir sowle yf sche cowd or ellys mygth a schewyd as sche fel” (51). Or as Barry Windeatt confirms in English Mystics of the Middle Ages: “She [Margery] tells Richard of Caister that the Trinity spoke to her soul more exaltedly about the love of God than any book she had ever heard read” (11). 93 In “Walter Hilton” Bestul writes the “familiar designation of Hilton as a mystic is especially crippling in his case because it tends to invite attention to his private spiritual life (about which he says very little), and, more importantly, because it abstracts him from a highly contested religious environment in which he seems to have been actively engaged, as witnessed by his so-called minor works, especially the Latin ones” (89). 94 See Thomas H. Bestual “Walter Hilton.” Also, Nicholas Watson writes in regard to contemporary scholarship that the “required negotiations between the Counter-Reformation categories still used by mystical theology and the less clearly defined medieval English situation” has created a situation in which  162 helps to situate Hilton within the mystical tradition of the fourteenth century. Ellen Ross, in her article “Ethical Mysticism: Walter Hilton and the Scale of Perfection “posits that Walter differs from Julian and Margery because in his writing it is not “the literal imaginative reenactment of the particular events of Christ’s life” but instead the “recollection and reenactment of the spirit which underlay and gave rise to these events” (Ross 165). Thomas H. Bestul is in agreement with Ross in his chapter on “Walter Hilton” in Approaching Medieval Anchoritic Texts when he suggests that: [. . .] designation of Hilton as a mystic is especially crippling in his case because it tends to invite attention to his private spiritual life (about which he says very little), and, more importantly, because it abstracts him from a highly contested religious environment in which he seems to have been actively engaged, as witnessed by his so-called minor works, especially the Latin ones”.95 (89) Yet even Bestul contends that it: remains useful to consider Hilton along with Richard Rolle, the Cloud author, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe as one of a group of fourteenth or fifteenth century English writers who wrote in the vernacular about the cultivation or the direct experience of contemplative life. (88) Thus, to make the best sense out of Hilton’s text we need to first understand it within its historical context and then consider the contribution that it makes to the rhetoric of pain “the ‘moderate’ Hilton is taken as an icon of the sobriety which characterizes the ‘genuine’ English spiritual temper, despite the pietism even he advocated” (542). In terms of manuscript issues see SS Hussey “Editing The Scale of Perfection: Return to Recension,” and Michael G. Sargent “Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection: The London Manuscript Group Reconsidered.” 95 See Nicholas Waton,“The Middle English Mystics” The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999). 539-565.  163 and desire. Rhetorics of pain and desire are means to get to the contemplative life with repercussions for one’s rhetorical authority- one’s ethos in the world. Hilton, like Julian, was writing during a time that is widely recognized as tumultuous in social, political and religious arenas. Whereas Julian was writing from the anchorhold, Hilton for most of his writing was not a solitary. As an Augustinian Canon, Hilton was part and parcel of the religious world around him. One of the primary reasons that his world differs so greatly from that of Rolle, Julian and Margery is that within the religious milieu that Hilton was writing, the rising issues around Lollard heresy colored his work. Indeed, Nicholas Watson argues in his article “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, The Oxford Translation Debate and Arundel’s Constitution of 1409” that Hilton’s writing was part of the initial reaction to the Lollard movement. Watson argues that Arundel’s Constitutions “need to be regarded as the linchpin of a broader attempt to limit religious discussion and writing in the vernacular” (824). He notes that in a relatively short amount of time there was a grave change in vernacular theology between 1410-1415. Watson argues “in the decades before 1410, theology in English was as innovative as that in any vernacular during a comparable period of the Middle Ages, boasting original thinkers of the order of Rolle, Hilton, Langland, Julian . . . .Yet from a few years after 1410 until the sixteenth century there is a sharp decline both in the quantity of large theological works written in the vernacular and in their scope and originality’” (832), and he accounts for this change in the ways the Constitutions affected the writing and ownership of diverse texts. In Chapter 37, Hilton himself offers concrete evidence of orthodoxy, referencing the Lollard movement as a way that the devil might tempt spiritual people:  164 bi gosteli synnes maliciousli, as of mystrowynge of the articles of the feith or of the sacrament of Goddis bodi, also dispeir or blasphemye in oure Lord or in ony of His seyntis, or lothynge of here lif, or bittirnesse and unskilful hevynesse, or to mykil drede of hemsilf or of here bodi, yif thei putten hem hooli to Goddis service. (70-71) This indication of temptation through disbelief, while not directly related to pain, further reinforces Hilton as a writer taking a position central to that of the organized church. As an Augustinian canon Hilton was responsible for leading his subordinates in public works and aiding them in adhering to a contemplative life throughout this quickly changing era. Hilton’s writing, which seemed overwhelmingly conservative while he was writing would eventually be seen as radical in the years that followed his death.96 It is necessary, then, to ask the same questions of the body and of pain and desire that have been asked of the texts by Margery and Julian. How do pain and desire play out in Walter Hilton’s text? How does he use desire and pain as a strategy for achieving rhetorical authority? How does the body work for Hilton with respect to religion/mysticism? In The Scale of Perfection these issues operate very differently from the same issues in Julian or Kempe’s text. Hilton’s text is less intensely personal than the autobiographical Margery and less focused on actual contemplation of Christ’s life events than Julian’s Revelation. Instead, Hilton’s writing focuses on achieving a spiritually worthy life while addressing issues such as “the fire of love” and the existence of an earthly body. Indeed, after Rolle’s text, Hilton’s most closely fits Gunn’s category of Pastoral Literature. His text is clearly concerned with the welfare of his reader’s soul. 96 Hilton’s Scale of Perfection is among texts that could have one accused of heresy.  165 Language directly affected the subject position of Julian and Margery in their shifts to authoritative religious personas. As evidenced in Chapters 2 and 3 of this dissertation, this shift was facilitated through the use of pain, desire and the first person pronoun. Hilton does shift his subject position in Scale of Perfection; however, what is note-worthy about his text is not how he shifts his subjectivity, but instead the fact that he uses pain and desire to write about the mystical experience. Hilton is able to create a rhetorical situation where he disparages pain and his attention to desire becomes the model for attaining a mystical experience, indeed, “In Hilton’s schema mystics can pursue the mystical life quite successfully without ever experiencing any phenomena such as voices or visions” (Ross 162). This is markedly different from the writings of Rolle, Julian and Margery. In Hilton’s work, we can see how pain is incorporated into the rhetoric of a more conservative and pragmatic spiritual program than the visionary piety of Julian or Margery. II. Hilton’s Piety One issue that arises in Hilton’s text is that, unlike the other three mystics in this study his writing does not privilege the body or any of the burning or pain that the other writers mention. Hilton is in many ways is responding to the attention that other writers, namely Rolle, have paid to issues of the body. Ross suggests that “At times, Hilton’s association of the image with the powers of the soul and not with the body might seem to place him in the camp of theologians who would associate human worth with the soul and disparage the body. This would however, be a misreading. The body is not evil in itself” (173). In reading The Scale of Perfection, the lack of bodily experience in the work  166 is stunning after having spent time reading The Form of Living, The Book of Showings, and The Book of Margery Kempe. Unlike the other mystics in this study Hilton does not rely on physical attributes to attain spiritual perfection. Where in Rolle’s text the reader was cautioned to take heed of the “fyre of love,” Julians’ text desired “bodily sekeness,” and Margery wept freely, Hilton’s text and body are silent. However, Hilton does not entirely ignore the body; instead he uses it to create a more conservative rhetoric of the body rooted in conservative desire. In “Walter Hilton: A Contemplative Spirituality for all the Baptized,” Arthur B. Chappell proposes that desire plays a crucial role in Hilton’s text: it is desire which is the most crucial element. The most active person can live a life like that of a solitary if he or she desires none of the prideful things of the secular world. Second, true desire of poverty, which essentially describes the life of the contemplative is internal (41). Chappell is pointing to how Hilton was encouraging his reader, a solitary woman, to live as a solitary even though she seems distressed at the time he is writing. However, Hilton also identifies that a reader could live a life of a solitary even if active in the world as long as the only true desire they have is for poverty. Unlike Julian or Margery, Hilton makes no apologies for his writing. While one of the conventions for women’s writing was an apologia, often in opening statements, in which women sought to assuage their status as women, Hilton is not bound by this convention. In fact, Hilton has the authority to give direction to others, thus it is important to remember that Hilton’s text, Scale I, was partially an instruction manual for an anchoress, whom he addresses as “Goostli suster” (31). Hilton’s text is directed primarily to a woman reader, quite possibly in a position of subjugation to Hilton.97 97 S.S. Hussey notes in “The Audience for the Middle English Mystics” that “Hilton’s major work, the Scale of Perfection, begins its first book (of two) with an address to a ‘ghostly sister’ who is a recluse.  167 Much of Hilton’s ethos, it would seem, comes from his already privelaged position within the church hierarachy. Margery and Julian wrote as women and thus when they discussed situations pertaining to the body, they were often writing about their own bodies. In Hilton’s case, he is authoring instructions that would place restrictions on the body of his “spiritual sister.” These restrictions specifically work to regulate the way that Hilton’s reader would have experienced the “fire of love.” Book I of Hilton’s text sets out to guide this anchoress in her own spiritual journey up the scale of perfection. At the outset of this text, he makes two distinctions necessary for one to accomplish this journey. One distinction is the difference between the active and contemplative life. Hilton himself sought what was called a mixed life, one that was both active and contemplative. Yet, for his reader, contemplative life is what she should be seeking to achieve. Hilton writes: “Actif lif lieth in love and charité schewyd outward in good bodily werkes, in fulfillynge of Goddis comaundementes and of the sevene deedys of mercy, bodeli and goostli, to a mannys even Cristene” (32). Active life is a plausible life. It takes into account that one lives in the world and can do God’s work. Contemplative life, for Hilton, “is in perfight love and charité feelid inwardly bi goostl vertue and bi soothfaste knowynge and sight of God in goosteli thynges” (33). Thus, contemplative life will be spent in seeking God inwardly. The second distinction that Hilton makes is the demarcation between the body and the soul, which Hilton accomplishes by discussing bodily enclosure. These two distinctions set the tone for the rest of the text and these distinctions often entail descriptions of bodily restrictions. Hilton is clear that he wants there to be a distinction between those who are holy in only [. . . .] But as Book I proceeds, it is evident that classes other than anchoresses are being addressed” (112- 113). Perhaps a nod to the sense that Hilton had of his own work being widely read.  168 an outward way—through their speech and bodily works—and those who are truly contemplative because of their spirituality. In looking at how Hilton constructs the physical body readers can learn what he, and likely the larger church, believes was important in dividing the body and soul. Hilton encourages his reader to “turne thyne herte with thy body principali to God, and schape thee withinne to His likenesse bi mekenesse and charité and othere goostli vertues, and thanne art thou truli turned to Hym” (30). By encouraging his reader to shape herself to God’s likeness, Hilton is setting forward one correct image, an image that puts forth ideas of meekness and charity above all else. Hilton does not want his reader to misinterpret what a physical or spiritual image of Christ might be, instead, he is insisting on what the correct image to contemplate is. He also pays close attention to his reader’s status as a newly enclosed anchoress. This of course, would affect her social interactions and her body. Of enclosure he writes: thu may with thi bodi be speryd in an hous, but that thu schuldest knowe that the cause of thy bodili enclosynge is that thu myght the betere come to goosteli enclosynge; and as thi bodi is enclosid fro bodili conversacioun of men, right so that thyn hert myght be enclosid from fleisschli loves and dredis of alle ertheli thynges. (31-32) Enclosure, as Ann K. Warren explains, often incorporated rituals around last rites and funeral masses. Thus, an enclosed anchoress essentially became “dead” to her community while still remaining an important spiritual contact. The enclosed flesh of the anchoress then sets her apart from her contemporaries who are not enclosed. For Hilton though, this bodily enclosure is solely a means to a more elevated spiritual understanding.  169 There remained a possibility that an anchoress, though she was warned not to, might take on educating a child, or remaining in contact with the community outside her anchorhold in effect acting as a spiritual guide, or consultant for her community.98 Hilton would not have found this appropriate. For Hilton, an anchoress is enclosed solely to achieve spiritual understanding. She should not engage in any spiritual dialogues with outsiders and should remain firmly in contemplation for the duration of her enclosure. Note that Hilton specifically cautions against “fleisschli loves” and “erthelit thynges.” Perhaps, Hilton is mediating some of his anxiety over women’s bodies through the directives about enclosure to his “spiritual sister.” Hilton cautions his reader about her body in other places throughout the text. Later he warns against overusing physical penance by stating “The highere he clymbeth bi bodili penaunce and othere vertues and hath not this, the lowere he falleth” (51). Later, Hilton, like other pastoral writers, delivers an even firmer direction to his reader. In this lengthy description he writes: I seie not that thou schal mowen in deede ay performe thyn entent; for ofte sithes thi bodili nede in etynge, slepynge, and spekynge, and the freelté of thi fleisch schal lette thee and hyndre thee, be thu nevere so bisy. But I wolde that thyn entente and thi wille were alwey hool for to traveil bodili or goostli, and no tyme to be ydel, but alwey liftynge up thyn herte bi desire to thy Lord Jhesu Crist and to the blisse of hevene, whethir thu ete or drynke, or ony othir bodili travaile that thu usist, as mykil as thou mai wilfulli leve it not. For yif thou have this entent, it schal make thee ay quyk and scharp in thi traveile; and yif thou falle bi freelté or necgligence 98 Take, for example, the evidence that Margery Kempe offers in her visit to Julian of Norwich.  170 to ony idel occupacion, or in veyn speche, it schal smyte upon thyn herte scharpeli as a prikke and make thee for to yrke with alle vanitees, and for to turne agen hastili into inwarde biholdynge of Jhesu Crist bi praieres or bi summe gode dede or occupacion. For as anemptis thi bodili kynde, it is good to use discrecion in etynge, and drynkynge, and in slepynge, and in alle maner bodily penaunce, or in longe praier bi speche, or in bodili feelynge bi greet fervour of devocioun, eyther in weepynge or in swiche othere, and also in ymagynynge of the spirit. (55-56) In this lengthy speech, Hilton is carefully outlining for his readers his position on some popular medieval practices of heavy physical penances and severe fasting as a way to attain true spirituality.99 He is cautioning his “dear sister” to steer clear of these overly onerous situations for fear that the acts themselves might distract her from her spiritual goals. Additionally, he suggests “discrecion” in all “werkes” if she is to attain her spiritual goals. This guidance serves to both set direction for a contemplative life and also regulates the body of Hilton’s reader. Hilton continues: “For thu schalt hate synne, and alle fleischli loves and dredis, in thyn herte withouten cesynge, and thou schalt love vertues and clennesse, and desire hem withouten stintynge, yif thou myghtest,” (56) thus again reinforcing his desire for his reader to be focused on internal contemplation rather than on external ways to attain contemplation. Hilton is exceedingly worried about the manner through which someone might attain true contemplation. In Chapter 73, he writes “But this travaile agen the ground of leccherie nameli schal be goostli, as bi prayers and goostli vertues, and not bodili bi no 99 Among other works see Carolyn Walker-Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. (Berkeley: U of California P, 1987).  171 bodili penaunce” (116). In case he had not yet made it clear to his reader, he continues to remind her of the importance of meekness and setting ones mind toward God. He writes, “Thou schulde mowe rathere slee thisilf thanne thou schuldest slee fleischli stirynges and likynges of lustis of leccherie, oither in thi herte or in thi fleisch, bi ony bodili penaunce” (116). Hilton wants to make it clear to his readers that self-inflicted pain and other fleshly scourges a person might incur without a spiritual connection are never going to reach the level of spiritual perfection that they seek. Hilton cautions his reader against using her body as way to reach a contemplative state, thus attempting to dissuade her from using popular techniques to gain high levels of contemplation. Hilton seems to be as anxious over connections to earthly flesh as Margery and Julian were comfortable with it. III. Invoking Pain: Finding the Body As earlier noted, Hilton’s text does not intensely focus on the body in the same ways as Julian, Margery or even Rolle. Thus, readers are tempted to either read Hilton’s text without the body, or search for it within his writing. In The Mystic Fable de Certeau writes: What is termed a rejection of “the body” or of “the word”-asectic struggle, a prophetic rupture—is but the necessary and preliminary elucidation of a historical state of affairs; it constitutes the point of departure for the task of offering a body to the spirit, of “incarnating” discourse, giving truth to space in which to make itself manifest. Contrary to appearances, the lack  172 concerns not what breaks away (the text), but the area of what “makes itself flesh” (the body). (80) Hilton’s text is one that seems to reject the body much in this way. In his text, it is evident that language and word become important; however, the body is equally important in Hilton’s writing, it just takes a bit more seeking to identify where and how the body works for Hilton. Catherine Muller in “How to Do Things With Mystical Language” writes that in the writing of many female mystics it is “visions [that] have an immediate performative power, first transferred to her body, then to her writings” (30). This is evident especially in Julian’s text. In Julian’s writing, we see speech acts being transferred to her body; however, we do not see the same type of actions happening for Hilton through his speech acts. Instead, his speech becomes cautionary, not sharing revelations, but closely guiding a contemplative individual to follow her ideas of contemplation and to keep them in line with church doctrine. While de Certeau advocates a “performative action of divine speech,” (115), he also “presents mystical language and writing as a creative place beyond the paradox of silence and speech, where the frontier between signifier and signified is being erased” (115). How then do these “creative places” work for Hilton? What is not being said when he invokes pain and how is pain invoked in his text? According to Scarry “in some peculiar way it is appropriate to think of pain as the imagination’s intentional state, and to identify the imagination as pain’s intentional object” (164). In Hilton’s text, his attempts to dissuade his readers from invoking or even feeling pain almost forces them to remain outside the realm of imagination and to focus on the very earthly-ness of their bodies even as he warns them away from the pleasures of  173 the feelings associated with affective piety. In describing how to discern good “schewynges” from evil ones, Hilton writes: that visions or revelaciouns of ony maner spirite, bodily apperynge or in yymagynynge, slepand or wakand, or ellis ony othere feelinge in the bodily wittes maad as it were goosteli; either in sownynge of the eere, or saverynge in the mouth, or smellynge in the nose, or ellis ony fellable heete as it were fier glowand and warmand the breest, or ony othere partie of the bodi or onythinge that mai be feelyd bi bodily wit, though it be never so comfortable and lykande, aren not verili contemplacioun. (40) Thus, these feelings, which Hilton acknowledges might happen, are to be guarded against lest they seem pleasurable. Furthermore, he warns his readers that “fleischli desires and unskilfulle likynges in mete or dirke, or ony likynges that longe to the bodi passynge reasonable need” (117) will keep them from achieving their goals of contemplation. However, his descriptions of them might just serve to make the reader more curious about how these sensations would feel. Hilton, like Julian and Margery also makes use of invocations of pain throughout his text; yet while the two women invoke pain to help them shift their own subject positions, Hilton again cautions against invoking pain. For Hilton, pain is evidently a dangerous way to connect to the spiritual realm. In light of this, Hilton writes: Also a partie of actif lif lieth in grete bodili deedes whiche a man dooth to hymsilf, as greet fastynge, mykil wakynge, and other scharp penaunce- doynge for to chastise the fleissch with discrecioun for trespaces that been  174 bifore doon, and bi sich penaunce for to refreyne lustes and likynges of it, and make it buxum and redi to the wil of the Spirit. (33) This discouragement of many of the practices that to modern readers signifies a mystical body positions Hilton squarely within church doctrine yet seemingly on the outside of mystical practice.100 These moments are foundational to Book I. Hilton refers to practices that would have been understood by his readers as ways to contemplation and he repeatedly warns people against those accepted practices in favor of encouraging them to contemplate and pray in way that does not involve pain and transgression. Hilton also admonishes his reader about Rolle’s “fire of love.” Appropriately for the fourteenth century, discussions of pain in a spiritual context becomes almost immediately connected to Rolle’s fire of love. From Hilton’s position, it is important that he raise his concern about this issue since the church was trying to reign in these practices. While Hilton is certainly not directly arguing against what Rolle wrote in Incendium Amoris, (The Fire of Love) he does take issue in Chapter 26 with the ideas of burning, heat and sweetness that appear in Rolle’s text. He writes: I telle thee, it is neither bodili, ne it is bodili feelid. A soule mai ele it in praiere or in devocioun, which soule is in the bodi, but he felith it not bi bodili witt. For though it be so, that yif it wirke in a soule the bodi mai turne into an heete as it were chafid for likynge travaile of the spirit, 100 There are medieval instructional texts that advocate fasting, self-flagellation, and other types of bodily penances. While the mystics in this study largely do not engage in these practices, other writers typically extolled the virtues of mortifying the flesh. See Ancrene Wisse, which Denis Renevey comments on in his article “Margery’s Performing Body.” In a note Renevey writes “Here is a brief enumeration ‘When you first get up, cross yourself and say…bowing forward on your knees on the bed…When you are fully dressed sprinkle yourself with ohldy water…and prostrate yourself toward there with these salutations…After this, fall to your knees before the crucifix…And with these words beat your breast” (213). Additionally, if there was not direct instruction in such activities, there is certainly evidence of indirect instruction in the exemplars of Saints where mortification of the flesh and abstention from food and drink lead a female saint to become virtuous.  175 nevertheless the fier of love is not bodili, for it is oonly in the goostli desire or the soule. (59) Hilton emphasizes that his readers must not experience the fire of love with their actual bodies. Instead, they should experience it in an intellectual or spiritual (though not imagined) sense. In Chapter 9, Hilton, like Rolle, and many others who instruct students in contemplation begins an argument articulating the separation of the second and third parts of contemplation. Here, he argues that there is a difference between a “burning love” in devotion and a “burning love” in contemplation: That othir partie mai be called brennande love in devocioun, but this is brennande love in contemplacion. That is the lowere, this is the highere. That is the swettere to the bodili felinge, this is swettere to the goostli felynge, for it is more inward, more goostli, and more worthi and more wonderful. For this is verili a taastynge, and as it were a sight of heveneli joye, not cleerli, but half in derkenesse, which schal be fulfillid and opynli clerid in the blisse of hevene. (38) By identifying the burning love of contemplation as above (and more worthy) than the burning love of devotion, Hilton seems to be trying to mark himself differently than other religious writers. For Julian, and indeed for Rolle, burning devotion was certainly an acceptable and should even be aspired to as practice. Hilton, though, is trying to move readers from the idea of devotion to the idea of contemplation. He allows them to maintain the transgressive nature of the sensuality that might be involved with a burning love, but wants to ensure that only those who have achieved a proper level of  176 contemplation are graced with that experience. This is similar to Rolle wanting his readers to have turned their minds appropriately toward God; however, Rolle seems to be more willing to allow that not everyone who feels the burning of love is going to achieve a high level of contemplation. As mentioned previously, Hilton offers mixed messages on the appropriateness of pain. His above comments appear to be his attempt to balance pain as scourge versus pain as something that should not be desired. Thus, Hilton is exercising control over the body of his reader. While Rolle wanted his reader to achieve contemplation, he did not attempt to exercise control over her body. In Rolle’s writing there is a definite push from desire to contemplation that is not evident in Hilton’s text. While Hilton warns his readers against this type of fire he complicates these warnings by calling attention to situations where the body of the contemplative person might be in pain. He writes: And yif thu doo so, though thi fleisch rise thereagen and wole not assente to thi wille, be not to mykil adraad, but thu schalt bere thanne and suffre the fals feelynge of thi fleisch as a peyne. And thou schalt thanne dispise and repreve that feelynge, and breke doun that risynge of thyn herte, as though thou woldest be wel paide for to be troden and spurnyd undir every mannys feet as a thynge whiche is outcast. (51) These lines position the reader as an individual who should reject pain as a spiritual gift and view pain as punishment (suffre the fals feelynge of thi fleisch as a peyne). This is in direct opposition to the writing of Julian who welcomed pain as a gift from God, and from Rolle who encouraged the fire of love. The fact that Hilton would take such a position against understanding pain as a gift from God is notable in what makes his  177 treatise different from these earlier works. Another complicating moment in Scale I occurs in Chapter 37, “Of divers temptaciouns of the feend of helle.” In this chapter, Hilton encourages his reader to “sufre a litil peyne” because that will ensure that the hand of God will eventually come to her aid. A third moment where Hilton complicates his own understanding of pain is in Chapter 38 as he offers remedies against the devil. He writes: “And yit yif thei wolen ai hange upoun hem, thanne it is good to hem that thei ben not angri ne hevy for to fele hem, but that thei with a good trust in God wole bere hem as it were a bodili peyne and a scourge of oure Lord for clensynge of here synnes, as longe as He wole” (72). Here, Hilton is suggesting that pain can be accepted to scourge the body of the devil; however, at other times pain might not be useful or accepted. Hilton’s mixed messages warn his reader to avoid the pain that might launch her into a contemplative state, but at the same time encourages her to embrace pain when it might be helpful in her quest for contemplation. Pain is largely something that Hilton wants his readers to fear. In Chapter 37, the only chapter where Hilton specifically addresses a comment to anchorites and anchoresses (“namely solitarie men and women”) he writes about the pain that they might suffer from devilish temptations: “bi dredes and ugglynesse and quakynges and schakynges, either apperynge to hem in bodili liknesse or ellis in ymagynyng, slepynge and wakynge, and tarieth hem so that thei mai unnethes have ony reste” (71). Hilton seems to think that solitary contemplatives might be more at risk for these temptations than other individuals. Ravishment becomes another focus for Hilton. In Rolle, ravishment was a wholly positive experience, one that a reader should desire and should hope to receive. Rolle’s  178 romanticized version of ravishment hearkened to the tradition of courtly love. He warns: “That is for to seie, whoso bi raveschynge of love is fastned to God, thanne God and a soule aren not two but bothe oon. Not in fleisch, but in oo spirit. And sotheli in this onynge is the mariage maad bitwixe God and the soule, which schal nevere be brokyn” (38). Locating the union between God and the soul is a clear departure from Margery and Julian’s use of spiritual marriage, which often also resulted in some sort of bodily experience. For example, spiritual union in Margery’s text results alternatively in tears or ecstasy. Although Hilton steers away from using erotic discourse and cautions his readers from doing so as well, he still “emphasizes the transgressive force of the sensuality and the vulnerability of the lower reason throughout The Scale of Perfection” throughout Scale I (Baker 44). In his acknowledgement of the sensuality of mystical marriage as a transgressive act, and in his condemnation of it, Hilton is still bringing the practice to light in a way that readers might perhaps find suggestive and even desirable. The language that he uses to describe this transgression might actually reassert the interest that some readers would have in experiencing the fire of love, which he has so carefully warned them away from. Hilton, however, while writing to a woman, excludes women from this tradition of ravishment. Take for example the scene Hilton describes between Christ and an apostle: “Seynt Joon tolde it not to Seynt Petir, as he askide, but he turnede him and leide his heed upon Cristis brest and was raveschid bi love into contemplacion of Goddis privetees, and so medfulli to hym he forgaat bothe Judas and Petir” (49). This situation, though close to the mystical marriage that Julian and Margery both use in their texts, is a type of ravishment is only available to men. Typically, there are no women present in Christ’s  179 entourage except for Mary Magdalene who is not counted among his apostles. Having this experience of being “raveschid bi love into contemplacion of Goddis privettees” available to men only though example thus excludes his primary reader of Book I from the transgression of spiritual ravishment. Ravishment occurs in other places in Hilton’s text where ravishment begins to sound more like Rolle in terms of the “fire of love.” The linking of spirit and not flesh is evident in Chapter 8 as Hilton considers 1 Corinthians 6:17 and writes: “That is for to seie, whoso bi raveschynge of love is fastned to God, thanne God and a soule aren not two but bothe oon. Not in fleisch, but in oo spirit. And sotheli in this onynge is the mariage maad bitwixe God and the soule, which schal nevere be brokyn” (38). A final place of ravishing occurs in Chapter 33: “Thei weren fulfillid of the Holi Goost, and thei bigan to speke the grete merveiles of God. And al that knowynge thei hadden bi ravyschynge of love of the Hooli Goost” (66). Like Rolle, Hilton takes up the issue of ravishment, yet he is not describing his ravishment or general definitions of ravisment; instead, he offers commentary on how ravishment is not about flesh, but about spirit and takes his examples from biblical history as such. While Hilton’s body is not fraught by ravisment, issues of masculinity still abound in his text. Unlike Rolle, Hilton does not overtly feminize his body the way Rolle does to become a hermit; however, Hilton still faces the tensions that would have existed for any male member of the clergy. In her text The Drama of Masculinity in the Medieval Guild Culture, Christina Fitzgerald discusses masculinity in the York and Chester play cycles, and concludes:  180 That model of silent, self-sacrificing, Christian stoicism is a type of masculinity still with us today. Such masculinity also carries with it a certain distance and detachment for the man who lives up to it—a quality that the dramatic Christ shares. Thus through him masculinity is defined as self-negation, as absence. (148) This seems to be the type of masculinity that Hilton is projecting to his readers. For Hilton, the male body is expected to be masculine in the way that Christ was masculine. Readers are expected to read absence in Hilton’s writing, as he regularly offers negations of the body to his readers. Hilton’s masculinity seems stoic. He closely identifies with Christ, but not with the affective Christ of Rolle’s text. He reminds readers “the festenynge of Jhesu to a mannys soul is bi good wille and a greet desire to Hym oonli” (43). Thus, it is through good will and desire to know Christ that a person can achieve this goal. For Hilton, Christ becomes the “exemplary male” (Fitzgerald 147). Masculinity in Hilton’s text revolves around cautioning moderation and wholeness. Hilton writes “the ymage of Jhesus is maad of virtues with mekeness, parfite love, and charite” (127). He goes on to then discuss how man has come to know the image of sin through Adam and writes that the only thing to do with this image is to “Take this bodi of synne and doo hym on the Cros, that is for to seie, breke doun this image and slee the fals love of snne in thisilf. As Cristis bodi was slayn for oure trespace, right so thee bihoveth, yif thou wold be like to Crist, slee this bodily feelynge and fleschili luste in thisilf” (127). As any reader of the Passion knows, Christ remained stoic during the crucifixion, accepting of his fate, and welcoming of death. Here then, Hilton again is modeling how masculinity should exist for those trying to attain perfect contemplation.  181 Hilton references the body during other moments in his text. One moment that merits closer discussion is in Chapter 11 where Hilton asserts “Hou thu schal knowe whanne the schewinges to thi bodili wittes and the feelynge of hem aren good or yvele.” In this chapter, Hilton tries to distinguish for his reader when they are experiencing “good” showings or “yvele” ones. Hilton writes: If it be soo that thou see ony maner of light or brightnes with thi bodili iye or in ymagynynge, othir than every man mai see; or yif thou here ony meri or wondirful sowninge with thi bodili eere; or in thi mouth ony swete sodayne savour, othir than of kynde; or ony heete in thi breest as it were fier; or ony maner of deelighte in ony partie of thi bodi; or yif a spirit bodili appere to thee as hit were an angel for to conforte thee and teche thee; or ony swich feelynge which thu woost weel it cometh not of thiself ne of noo bodili creature -- be thanne waar in that tyme or soone aftir and wisili bihoold the stirynge of thyne herte. Yif thou be stired bicause of that likinge that thu feelist, for to drawe oute thyn herte from biholdinge of oure Lord Jhesu Crist and fro goostli occupacions, as from preiers, and thenkinge of thisilf and of thi defautis, fro the inward desire of vertues and of goostli knowynge and the feelinge of God, for to sette the sight of thin herte and thyn affeccioun, thi delite and thi reest principali therinne, wenynge that bodili feelinge schulde be a partie of heveneli joie and of angilis blisse, and for thi thee thynketh that thu schuldest never pray ne thinke not elles, but al hooli tende therto, for to kepe it and delite thee therinne: this feelinge is suspect and of the enemye. (41)  182 Here, Hilton again is warning directly against the incidents of bodily feelings that we have come to associate with mystics. Most specifically, Hilton cautions against hearing sweet sounds, having a sweet taste in the mouth, and of course- any feelings of “burning” in any part of the body. According to Hilton, these are markedly signs of possession by the devil. Thus, Hilton suggests to his reader to “refuse it and assente not therto,” because acknowledging these feelings would provide the devil an opening to further entice a contemplative person. Instead, Hilton suggests that one would know if their feelings were truly godly if: it maketh thee the more devoute and the more fervent for to pray, it maketh thee the more wise for to thenke goostli thoughtes; and though it be so that it stonyeth thee in the first biginnynge, neverthelees aftirward it turneth and quykeneth thyn herte to more desire of vertues and encreseeth thi love more bothe to God and to thyn evene Cristen; also it maketh thee more meke in thyn owyn sight. Bi thise tokenes may thu knowe thanne that it is of God. (42) Here, again, it is evident that Hilton is only comfortable with his readers experiencing feelings that bring them closer to God in contemplation. This is different from the other authors in this study. Rolle accepts that people will attain the burning of love without attaining a high level of contemplation. Additionally, Julian and Margery both allow for twinges of pain or pleasure that exist outside the confines of the contemplative mindset. Hilton seems suspicious that feelings manifesting within the body could be harmless, or could be gifts from God. He is insistent in numerous places throughout the text that feelings coming to a person’s through their bodies are suspect and that only if their minds  183 are turned toward God are feelings that might manifest within their body valuable and not dangerous. IV. Rhetoric and Desire Hilton, like Rolle, would have been familiar with classical rhetorical structures. Like Julian, it is also most likely that he is writing from within the realm of religious rhetorical structures and following many of the examples set forth in Basevorn’s Form of Preaching. One specific thing that Hilton does that was not evident, or at least not as evident in Julian’s writing is he makes frequent biblical allusions. Basevorn would place these under the guise of Amplification- one of the strategies that Julian used. Hilton though, is able to use Amplification in the manner of a preacher, since he is not constricted by gender to not preaching. Basevorn writes “When, however, we wish to amplify by means of interpretation, we must consider the different interpretations, and that one must be selected which best fits the prosition” (Murphy 181). Thus, Hilton amplifies almost all his writing using amplification through interpretation. One example of this occurs when he offers direction to his reader about eating and drinking. He quotes Saint Paul “Ubique et in omnibus institutus sum; et scio satiari, et esurire, habundare, et penuriam pati. Pmnia possum in eo qui me confortat (Philippians 4:12-13). I am enformed and taught in alle thinges, for I can hungre and can ete, I can with plente and I can with poverte. I mai al in Him strengtheth me” (114). After this quotation and explantion, he goes on to write further paragraphs about the sinfulness of not eating or drinking and the sinfulness of eating and drinking without moderation. It is through these  184 short biblical allusions that Hilton amplifies his points until there is no question that the reader understands his purpose and ideas. Language plays an equally important role in Hilton’s text as it does in the writing of the other mystics in this study. Specifically in Scale I it is interesting to look at words that other mystics have used in their texts and see where the comparison lies. One place where we can start to do this is in Hilton’s use of the first person pronoun. Unlike Julian, who obsessively used “I,” or Margery, who instead of a first person pronoun created a character of herself, Hilton uses “I” whenever he is trying to interject a clear position or offer a set up for the ideas he is about to discuss. In all cases, these moments of first person interjection are less powerful than they are in Julian’s text; thus, Hilton is not using identification as a rhetorical strategy. Hilton uses “I” most frequently with “I schal, I tele, or I sey.” The first place he does this is early in the text when he writes to his reader about how she should turn to God “I sey not that thou so lightli on the first day may be turnyd to Hym” (30). Hilton elucidates from his own experiences the issues she might have in her own quest for spiritual growth. Thus, he is aware that as a new anchoress she might be struggling and his words are meant to give her reassurance. Other places in the text are more interesting in terms of Hilton’s use of the first person pronoun. One such instance here is where Hilton is reminding his reader about the how she might react to a venial sin.101 Hilton writes: “I telle thee soothli, yif thou wolt be truli meke, thee schal thenke a venial synne more grevous and more peyneful to thee, and gretter schal be in thi sight sumtyme, thanne grete deedli synnes of othere men” (48). Again, the reader seems to understand that Hilton is speaking from experience and thus 101 A venial sin is typically considered a “lesser sin.” It does not require confession nor penance and does not result in an ultimate separation from God, merely a temporary loss of grace. In Roman Catholicism, this is in direct opposition to a mortal sin, which will condemn one to hell if unconfessed and not absolved.  185 while in many cases he is regulating the body of his reader, he is also working to make some sort of connection with his reader by establishing his own experience as a touchstone for experiences that she might encounter. Another common use of “I” in Hilton’s text is when he is telling his reader how it “seems”: “And that thou myghtest redili bringe it aboute, I schal telle thee as me thenketh” (77), thus Hilton manages to remove the readers own authority of interpretation, instead offering for her an interpretation on whatever topic he is discussing (in this case how one can determine the worthiness of his/her soul). It is almost as if he is taking power away from a woman designating the importance of her own personal exeperience. There is another instance of denying the power of personal experience shortly thereafter. In regards to how his reader might seek and find Jesus Hilton tells her: “Neverthelees, in as moche as thou hast not yit fulli seen what it is, for thi goostli yye is not yit openyd, I schal telle oon word for alle whiche thou schalt seke, desire, and fynde, for in that word is al that thou hast loste” (83). Again, Hilton is not going to allow his reader to find her own way, instead he will be proscriptive in how she gets to where he thinks she is going. This is again markedly different from Julian and Rolle. Rolle offers interpretation, but in his writing it seemed less imperative that his reader always adopt his particular viewpoint. Julian never told her reader how to think about something outright; instead, she offered her own interpretation without insisting on anyone else seeing it in her way. The first person pronoun for Hilton becomes another tool through which he rhetorically regulates not only his reader, but also his reader’s mind. The verb stirren is also used in significant ways in Hilton’s text. As Aers and Staley write in Powers of the Holy:  186 Sitrren can also mean to set in motion, to turn aside, to rouse, to trouble, to exhort or coax, to inspire or prompt, and to incite. Hilton employs stir with an eye to both ambiguity and irony, using a verb of motion to describe his sense of what the contemplative state in fact is, or ought to be. He rules out the turbulence of false arousal as sterile, affirming instead the hortatory power of rhetoric to encourage humble labor within the confines of ecclesiastical doctrine. As an author whose words might well stir his reader, he disclaims his own force … presenting himself as the medium or go between who conveys power not his own, whose exhortation prompts the orderly process of spiritual gestation. (136-137) Throughout the text, Hilton’s use of the variants of stirren serves further to engage his reader in his ideas. Lynn Staley in her edition of The Book of Margery Kempe indicates that the word stiryngs can refer to either “physical or spiritual arousals” (xvi). One place where it is clear that Hilton is using the verb in this way is where he writes: “Alle thise stirynges wole alwey boylen ought of the herte as watir wole renne from the sprynge of a stynkande welle” (46). Here the image that Hilton offers of “stirrings boiling out of the heart” reminds readers of the visceral physical images that were evident in Julian’s text. Another place where Hilton suggests physical arousal is in his passage where he writes: And though thu feele ony stirynge in thyn herte agens ony of hem bi suggestion of the enemye, for to putte thee in doute and in dweer of hem, be thu stidefast and not to mykil have drede of sich stirynges ne of the feelynge of hem, but forsake thyn owen witte withoute disputynge or ransakynge of hem, and sette thi feith generali in the feith of Hooli  187 Chirche, and charge not the styrynge of thyn herte whiche, as thee thenkith, is contrarie therto. For that stirynge that thu felist is not thi feith, but the feith of Holi Chirche is thi feith, though thou neither see it ne fele it. (53) In this passage, Hilton again is reminding his reader to be cautious of bodily stirrings (in the heart), but he seems to be more accepting of these than he is over the idea of burning love. Here still Hilton is careful to remind his reader that the stirring itself is not “faith” but instead the teachings of the church are the faith that someone should believe in. Hilton seems to be expressing some anxiety over what could be his perceived role as a facilitator of these emotions. One final useful incidence of this verb is where Hilton is discussing the proper use of prayers. Here Hilton writes, “For whanne thou seist thi mateyns, thou seist also thi Pater Noster principali; and over more to stire thee to more devocioun was it ordeyned for to seie psalmys and ympnys and siche othere whiche are maad bi the Holi Goost, as the Pater Noster is” (59). The stirrings of an individual during prayer within the mystical tradition often led (if we take Rolle and Julian as examples) to more erotically charged episodes with God. These suggestions of physical or spiritual arousal are yet another way that Hilton, as Baker suggests, still manages to transgress the boundaries that he is infact setting up about bodies. For Hilton, bodies transgress when they behave in ways where they are not controlled and not being restricted. By “stirynge,” these bodies manage to transgress the regulations that Hilton has suggested. One final word to look at in Hilton’s text is desire. Desire is used more than one hundred times through Scale I. Hilton’s first use of the word desire happens early on in  188 the text in Chapter 15. He writes: “Thise vertues schalt thou see in meditacion, hou goode, hou faire, hou profitable thei aren, and bi prayer thou schalt desire hem and gete hem, withoute whiche thu may not be contemplatif,” (46) here, Hilton sounds more like other mystical writers—desiring virtues is important—but only as a means to stronger contemplation. A strong connection between body and desire occurs in Chapter 27. Hilton writes: But I wolde that thyn entente and thi wille were alwey hool for to traveil bodili or goostli, and no tyme to be ydel, but alwey liftynge up thyn herte bi desire to thy Lord Jhesu Crist and to the blisse of hevene, whethir thu ete or drynke, or ony othir bodili travaile that thu usist, as mykil as thou mai wilfulli leve it not. (55) Here again, Hilton cautions the reader against strenuous measures to achieve contemplation while at the same time suggesting that his readers “lift up their hearts by desire.” These two opposing messages serve to allow readers to consider what Hilton is saying, and thus remain in the boundaries of the church, but it also gives them wiggle room in terms of how they might consider using desire to achieve contemplation. One of the most powerful images in Book I is when Hilton describes how a person in contemplation should put together all that they have learned and “brynge hit al withynne the trowthe and rulis of Hooli Chirche and caste it al in the morter of mekenesse and breke it smal with the pestel of drede of God, and throw the pouder of alle thise in the fier of desire, and offre it soo to thi Lord Jhesu Crist” (57). Here, Hilton clearly suggests that an appropriate offering to Christ depends on a level of desire. Thus, regardless of how uncomfortable Hilton appears to be with bodies and with desire even he acknowledges  189 that desire, and likely desire through the body, is necessary to achieve “perfect contemplation” of Christ. Desire appears in numerous ways throughout this text and there are two instances where it is especially fruitful. The first occurs in Hilton’s chapter about the knitting of souls: The knyttyng and the festenynge of Jhesu to a mannys soule is bi good wille and a greet desire to Hym oonli, for to love and for to have Hym and see Him in His blisse. The more goostli that he desireth, the fastere is Jhesu knyt to the soule; and the lesse that he desireth, the lousere He is knyt. Than what spirit or what felyng that it be that leeseth this desire and wolde drawe hit doun fro stable mynde of Jhesu Crist, and from the kyndeli stiynge up to Hym, for to sette it upon himsilf, thys spirit wole unknytten and undo Jhesu from the soule, and therfore it is not of God, but it is of the wirkynge of the enemye. Neverthelees, yif a spirit, or a felynge, or revelacion maketh his desire more, knytteth the knotte of love and of devocion to Jhesu fastere, openeth the sight of the soule into goostli knowynge more cleerli, and maketh it more meke in itsilf, this spirit is of God. (43) In this case, desire is for the mystical marriage that occurs in the “knyttyng” of souls.102 It is the desire of an individual that causes this to occur—thus the individual has the agency to create the mystical marriage. The more a person desires Jesus, the more likely it is that this reward will be granted. Perhaps his most dynamic use of the word is in Chapter 46 where he describes “Hou Jhesu schal be sought, desired, and founden” (83). 102 Rolle also has a passage about knitting the soul.  190 Hilton writes: “and he schulde nevere have wil to doo othir dede nyght ne—dai savynge the freelté and the bare nede of the bodili kynde—but desire, morne, prai, and seke hou he myght come agen therto” (83). Clearly, one must desire Jesus in order to find him. Desire comes before anything else. So although Hilton warns readers of the danger of pain, in feeling the fire of love that they may take as false divinity, desire is the point upon which a contemplative must focus. Hilton continues: Thanne yif it be so that thou felist grete desire in thyn herte to love and to plese Jhesu, either bi the mynde of this name Jhesu, or bi mynde or seynge of ony othir word, or praier, or in ony dede that thou doost, whiche desire is so mykil that hit putteth ought as it were bi strengthe alle othere thoughtes and desires of the world and of the fleisch, that thei moun not reste in thyn herte, thanne sekest thou wel Jhesu. (83-84) There is the expectation that there will be a physical manifestation of desire. It will be felt in “the heart to love and to please Jesus” and the contemplative is expected to be thankful for this because even if this love is physically manifested it will force out any desires of the secular world. For Hilton, desire, as pain, can be troublesome; yet, as long as Jesus is at the heart of the desire, the person is headed on the right path. Hilton’s text is clearly different from the work of Rolle, Julian and Margery. His writing, though less affective in nature, is thoroughly instructive and guides an anchoress through her vocation in a way that would be appropriate for his and her changing religious milieu. As a work that fits rhetorically with pastoral literature, Hilton offered instruction and assistance to his reader. Though this chapter has focused only on Book I of this complex theological text, it has touched on some of the larger issues with Hilton’s  191 writing. Hilton exists in concert with the other three mystics in this study, yet his marked differences in his approach to the body and to teaching his reader sets him apart from the very embodied mysticism of Rolle, Julian and Margery. Hilton is rhetorically embodied and allows his reader to focus on pain and desire without it being the consuming narrative of his text.  192 Conclusion In conclusion, this dissertation attempts to carve a new space for understanding how medieval English mysticism wrote the connections between the body, pain, desire and instruction. Medieval mystics, especially Rolle, Julian, Margery, and Hilton, teach readers how pain and desire work on the mind and body to lead a person to God. In this study, I first examined Rolle and the way his body became an instructional text; first for Margaret Kirkby and subsequently for later readers of his English works. Rolle’s foundational writing, demonstrating the essential connection between pain, desire, and instruction, established a basis from which later mystics could work. In his instructions to Margaret Kirkby, Rolle uses the Passion as a guide for both her and other readers. His use of Christ’s body as a text suggests ways for others to read the bodily text of the Passion. Rolle clarifies for readers how to behave through these instructions. By connecting desire to the body through his explanation and definition of the multiple degrees of love and of the fire of love, Rolle gave readers another point to enter into a spiritual discourse. Through his use of the vernacular, Rolle successfully delivers his ideas about the body and desire. The popular access to his vernacular texts enables his message of burning love to be spread more widely. In Chapter 2, I demonstrated how Julian of Norwich uses the semiotics of the body to construct her rhetorical authority. Her work positioned the body in pain as the location through which divine union could occur. Julian’s invocations of pain allowed her to separate herself from women in monastic communities. When receiving her visions, Julian’s body is constantly in pain and it is this pain that makes her acutely aware of her body. Desire, the desire for pain, links Julian’s body closely to her soul allowing  193 her to construct an embodied self. Julian’s desires are ones that she can articulate and that are fulfilled through her visions. Rhetorically, Julian positions herself as the “I” of the text. Throughout Revelations, Julian’s repeated use of the phrase “I desired” works to demonstrate that she is the force that is actively receiving visions. Locating much of her pain in the realm of mental and emotional anguish through her descriptions of the Passion of Christ, Julian is able to connect with her readers and advance her theological position. Julian’s vision and language creates a highly charged rhetoric that eroticizes and embodies both her body, and the body of Christ in the Passion. As a vernacular writer, she establishes a firm link forged by pain between desire and physical experience. Chapter 3 examines how Margery Kempe’s Book differed from the earlier works of Rolle and Julian in looking at the way a lay-woman was able to demonstrate rhetorical agency through the performativity of her body. Using strategies that significantly differed from Julian, the other woman writer in this study, Margery repeatedly marks her own body to gain authority for her visions, and later for the writing in which she engages. The very creation of Kempe’s Book was a battle between Margery and her scribes. Kempe’s authority largely comes about through her performance of Margery. Her ability to perform her body and her religious devotion in varied ways creates her body as a readable text. Through weeping, clothing, business ventures, and denial, Margery maps holiness onto her body. Kempe commodifies Margery’s body through these different bodily moments and thus Margery uses her body as a means of exchange with God, with her husband, and with church authorities. Additionally, Margery aligns herself with the spiritual heritage of women through her identification with St. Anne and the Virgin Mary. For Margery, pain, whether self-inflicted or from God, functions as a way for her to  194 inscribe her body, cultivate her authority as a visionary and gain access to religious figures. In Chapter 4, I discussed how Walter Hilton instructs his reader in a pragmatic conservative approach to piety that regulates the body of his (female) reader. Hilton, as a more conservative spiritual guide, authored instructions that placed restrictions on his reader, and the body is not as prevelant in his writing as it was in the other three authors in this study. Pain for Hilton is a dangerous way to connect to the divine, yet at the same time, he recognizes that some level of pain is necessary to achieve contemplation. Hilton complicates his readers’ understanding of pain. Language is quite important in Hilton’s text. Of particular interest is Hilton’s use of the verbs stirren and desire. In his use of stirren, Hilton has set up an alternative to Rolle’s fire of love. Yet, stirrings are, for Hilton, physical moments of desire. Additionally in his use of the word desire, Hilton acknowledges that desire is necessary to achieve contemplation of Christ. Desire and pain are more troublesome for Hilton than they are for the other three writers in this dissertation. Hilton wants his readers to understand that he, as a writer, is embodied in how he understands Christ; however, he does not want his readers to be overly consumed by ideas of pain and desire. This dissertation contributes another element to the already rich field of medieval mysticism. By examining Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Walter Hilton, I attempted to more clearly articulate the links between pain and desire and show how the bodies of the writers were used as both texts for themselves and for their readers. By working with the theories of Elaine Scarry, Ariel Glucklich, Michel de Certeau, Elizabeth Grosz and Judith Butler, I attempted a feminist reading of these texts, with the  195 hope of enlightening contemporary readers about the connections between pain, desire and embodiment. As with any project, there are multiple directions that were not explored, thus providing room for future study. Specifically, this project did not seek to connect to periods beyond the 14th century in examining pain and desire. One interesting point for future study would be to look at religious constructions of pain in later eras to see if the form and structure of pain would be similar in non-mystical situations. 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