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Birgitta of Sweden, Revelationes. Ghotan: Lübeck, 1492.
{Dame Margaret Gascoigne, O.S.B., an exiled English Benedictine nun at Cambrai in Flanders, died there in 1637, hers being the first grave within the shadow of their monastic house.(1) Before that date she had compiled a contemplative anthology of her devotions. In its Chapter Forty-Two, she had copied out a fragment from a medieval Julian exemplar likely present at Cambrai, and commented upon its text. She misreads, or only partially reads, the text, believing that Julian dies, rather than lives, following her death-bed vision of 1373. Nevertheless she responds appropriately to her reading, taking Julian's experiencing of God's presence into her own intense life of monastic prayer. In so doing she is part of a Benedictine continuity of contemplation, a continuity that transcends time and gender, caring only that the soul be oned with God in eternity that equally included women with men, to be attained in a community where all are vowed to conversion from worldliness, to stability and to obedience.
Dame Margaret Gascoigne's book of devotions would likely have been found in her cell at her death and was treasured by her Benedictine Sisters who particularly made copies of it when the Cambrai daughter house was founded at Paris. The copy that survives, called by Placid Spearitt, O.S.B., 'Gascoigne B', was most carefully made by Dame Bridget More, O.S.B., descendant of Thomas More, sister of the foundress of the Cambrai Our Lady of Consolation, Dame Gertrude More, O.S.B., and herself first Prioress of the Paris Our Lady of Good Hope. Another of their relatives was Dame Agnes More, again a descendant of Thomas More, who wrote a treatise influenced by Julian of Norwich, titled The Building of Divine Love. While Dame Clementia Cary, O.S.B., was the Foundress of the Paris house; being the daughter of Viscount Falkland, Viceroy in Ireland, she had contacts with Caroline royalty, especially Queen Henrietta Maria, and she brought with her into community her father's chaplain, Serenus Cressy, O.S.B., who would publish the first edition of Julian of Norwich's Showings in 1670.(2) Dame Margaret Gascoigne had been sister to Dame Catherine Gascoigne, O.S.B., who was elected first Abbess of Our Lady of Consolation in Cambrai in 1629, both coming from Yorkshire, their niece, Dame Justina Gascoigne, succeeding Dame Bridget More as Prioress at Our Lady of Good Hope in Paris in 1665.
The party of English women had settled in Cambrai in 1623, and within six months they had petitioned the President of the English Congregation to send them a monk qualified to train them in Benedictine contemplative prayer. In answer, they were joined in 1624 by Father Augustine Baker, O.S.B., who became their spiritual director until his stormy removal in 1633, when he returned to Douai. He went back to England in 1638, dying there in 1641.
The Paris daughter house, founded in 1651, brought forth an intense burst of copying of all devotional books in the Cambrai library prior to that removal, the greatest number being executed by Dame Barbara Constable, who had joined the Cambrai community from Yorkshire in 1645,(3) the copied books including Dame Bridget More's manuscript of Dame Margaret Gascoigne (G), Dame Barbara Constable's fragmentary manuscript of Julian's Showings (U), and Dame Clementia Cary's complete manuscript of Julian's Showings (S1). Another complete manuscript is found with S1 and given the siglum S2. Both these manuscripts have careful annotations made in preparation for the 1670 first edition. Yet another manuscript is the most carefully prepared Stowe 42, turning the queries and NBs of S1 and S2 into carefully prepared but not quite finished shoulder notes from which Serenus Cressy's 1670 edition was to be typeset. All these manuscripts tend to give the words to Christ to Julian in larger script than they do the texts in which these are embedded.
How did Margaret Gascoigne and the Cambrai and Paris communities come by a medieval exemplar of Julian's Showings? It is possible that they acquired the exemplar for the Paris Long Text, Bibliothèque Nationale, Anglais 40 (which in their day was shut up in the Bigot collection in Rouen), but which had been copied out by Syon Abbey in exile in Flanders. They could have obtained that exemplar from Sheen Anglorum. But the manuscripts of G, U, S1 and S2 all differ from P in that they enlarge or underline Christ's words to Julian, while P rubricates them. The other possibility is that Dame Margaret Gascoigne had treasured a Julian manuscript that had remained in her family since the days of Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford and patron of Syon Abbey (4), and which was to engender in turn G, U, S1, S2, C1 and Serenus Cressy's published edition from C1 as C2.
These texts were read and copied in the midst of a living community of prayer and contemplation, and one that continues today at Stanbrook and at Colwich. But the Sisters had to fight with every weapon of love and obedience to preserve their manuscripts, including their manuscript of Julian of Norwich's Showings. In 1655, they were ordered by Dom Claude White, then President of the English Benedictine Congregation, to surrender their contemplative books which were perceived 'to containe poysonous, pernicious and diabolicall doctrine'. The Abbess and the Sisters prostrated themselves before Dom White, refusing, in charity, to surrender their books (one of them their exemplar manuscript of Julian's Showings),
We humbly beseech your Very Reverend Paternity to pardon us that we do not answer you in the simple word of I or No, we having given your Paternity many reasons why wee could not answer I, and as for No, without the necessary circumstances wee feared it might carry a show of disrespect to your Very Reverend Paternity to whom we owe and desire to perform all dutifull obedience and respect.(5)
It was perhaps, knowing of such danger to their books, that Cambrai had already carefully duplicated these for their Paris daughter house. There, once again, their spiritual director was favourable to Augustine Baker's methods for encouraging contemplation in the seventeenth century through the reading and writing of fourteenth-century texts. Father Serenus Cressy, O.S.B., their chaplain, not only encouraged their scribal activity, but he had them help him prepare an excellent edition of Julian of Norwich's Showings for its eventual 1670 publication. That strategy of carefully copying out their contemplative books from the past, preserving them for the future, stood the English Benedictines in good stead. When most of the Cambrai books were lost at the French Revolution, those at Paris to a large extent survived, including Dame Bridget More's copy of Dame Margaret Gascoigne's Devotions with its passage from Julian's Showings written out in a most lovely hand and lovingly sewn together, and which were brought to England to safety. To England also came the Upholland Manuscript with its Julian excerpts copied out by Dame Barbara Constable. Her portrait survives.(6) To England likewise came the two Sloane Manuscripts with their complete copies of Julian's Showings, the first copied out by Dame Clementia Cary, Foundress of the Paris house. Perhaps even the Westminster Cathedral Manuscript was shipped back to England from Lisbon's Syon Abbey in exile during this period. Perhaps only the Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Anglais 40, remains now in exile. But, on the other hand, perhaps there are two further Julian of Norwich Showings manuscripts on the Continent, the lost exemplar manuscripts, which may still be in Holland and in Belgium, and which the writer of this Juliansite essay challenges her readers to find.
Text:
Thou hast saide, O Lorde, to a
deere child of thine, Lette me alone,
my deare worthy childe, intende
(or attende) to me, I am inough to
thee; reioice in thy Sauiour and
Saluation (this was spoken to Julian
the Ankress or norwich as appeareth by
the book of her reuelations); This o Lorde
I reade and thinke on with great ioie,
and cannot but take it as spoken allso
to me; Thou therein biddest me lette
thee alone; to which I can not but
answere and readilie yealde & submitte
my selfe, sayeng; O yes, my Lorde;
for what doe I desire more then to
Lett thee alone in all things which thou
wouldest do or permitte in me, or
concerning me, which I am most as=
sured wholie to be intended by thee
for the cleansing and saluation of my
soule, as yet most vncleane & vn=
worthy of thee; thou wouldest for
that end purge me of all impedi=
ments in my waie of sincere tend=
dance towards thee and seruing of
thee, whereby thou mightest allwaies
finde me as pliable to thy Blessed will,
as waxe before the fire in the hande of
the aartesman is pliable to the maner
of his working. Intende to me, saiest
thou, and thou knowest, that that is it which
I aime at, and seeke to do at all times,
both daie and night, and nothing ells,
but that I maie continuallie attende
to thee,
And in her last sicknes, she
caused these words to be placed
before her eyes at the crucifixe,
which she regarded till her death);
Thou saiest allso; I am ynough to
thee; and to this I would willinglie an=
swere with the tongues & voices of all
creatures, saieng; Yes, my deare
Lorde, thou alone indeed art inough
to me; for if all friends turne into
foes, & all pleasures into paines, yet
art thou inough to me,these other
things being all as nothing in regarde
of thee, who hast all good in thee, and
art and euer shallt be all in all to me,
And euen but to remember these thy
most delicious wordes; I am inough
to thee, is so great a ioie to my
hart, that all the afflictions, that are,
or (as I hope) euer shall fall upon
me (at least which I can imagin) do
and shall cause me to receaue from
them somuch comforte, solace, and
encouragement, as that I hope by
thy grace, they shall be most dear=
lie welcome vnto me. Thou there
saiest farther, reioice in thy sa=
uiour and in thy saluation;
but though my loue be so colde, that
I am farre from goeng this as I
ought, yet I desire that with all the might,
and powers of my soule, and with all the
affection of my harte, I could reioice
in thy infinite happines; and though
my soule be neuer so poore and in
neuer so great miseries, yet I desire
according to such abilitie as is in me
of thy gift, to ioy and reioy together with
thee, for what thou art and doest
possesse in thy immense riches,
power and glorie, and in all that
is pleasing to thee in all things, in thy
selfe and in all thy creatures, in the
riches of others, and my owne pouertie
and miserie (for to them, whom thou
art pleasing to, what thing of thine
can be displeasing.) and what is wan=
ting in me (through disabilitie) to
performe in this matter, I will re=
ioice and exullt in hart, that in all
fullnes and perfection it is supplied
and aboundeth in thee thy self, where
I hope my selfe accordinglie in the
time which thou hast from eternitie
foreordained for it, to finde by ex=
perience such supplie and amends
for all mine and other creatures in=
sufficiencies in the matter. I farther=
more reioice in my Saluation which
I confidentlie hope in vertue of thy
most free and liberall goodnes, in the
end to obtaine at the handes of thy
mercie, and in no sorte as if I could
expect anie such matter as due
to me or merited by me, nor anie
other waies to be attained to by me,
then by thy free giuft and meere
mercie (in vertue of the grace and
deserts of my most deere Lorde
and sauiour Jesu Christ thy onlie
and most dearelie beloued sonne)
which mercies and goodnesses of thine I
haue allreadie in various maners euen
in my owne most unworthie selfe so
greatlie and so frequentlie experienced, that
I can not, nor maie heerafter doubt there=
of, but euer maie, must, and will to the
end confidentlie hope in thesame, and
thereon onlie and wholie relie.
Notes
1.'Dame Catherine Gascoigne, 1600-1676', In a Great Tradition: Tribute to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, Abbess of Stanbrook, ed., The Benedictines of Stanbrook, p. 18.
2. [Sr. Benedict], How We Began: The Monastery of Our Lady of Good Hope, St Mary's Abbey, Colwich.
3. Placid Spearitt, O.S.B., 'The Survival of Mediaeval Spirituality Among the Exiled English Black Monks', American Benedictine Review 25 (1974), pp. 289-293.
4.'Dame Catherine Gascoigne', In a Great Tradition, ed. Benedictines of Stanbrook, p. 4. For Thomas Gascoigne, see Julia Bolton Holloway, Saint Bride and her Book: Birgitta of Sweden's 'Revelations'; Birger Gregersson and Thomas Gascoigne, The Life of St Birgitta, ed. Julia Bolton Holloway. Thomas Gascoigne obsessively collected and annotated all items connected with St Birgitta and would have been similarly interested in her English contemporary.
5. 'Dame Catherine Gascoigne', In A Great Tradition, ed. Benedictines of Stanbrook, p. 25.
6. It is given in the Catholic Record Society 13 (1913), and reproduced in the hard copy booklet, along with the pencil-drawn portrait of Dame Bridget More, O.S.B., the booklet also giving the facsimile of the actual manuscript text of H18.
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