Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. The Liturgical Kiss and the Second Reading of the Gospel of John
Eamon Duffy has suggested that the purpose of such an indulgence was “in order to encourage the laity to remain to the end of mass, even after the climactic moment of the elevation” (Duffy 1992, p. 124; see also Swanson 2006, p. 233).Also whoso ever saie or her devoutely the gospel of Saynt John In principio erat verbum, and knele doun or devoutelle encline at these wordes verbum caro factum est hathe a yer and xl days to pardon.(f. 141v)
Sharing a similar source text, the numbered list of virtues version of the Virtues of the Mass found in New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317 (hereafter Beinecke MS 317) defines “what euer it be” by “Yf þou kysse ground stoone or tre” (f. 2r). The closest Virtues of the Mass rendition of the liturgical practice can be found at the end of an exposition of the ceremony of the mass copied in Beinecke MS 317. The thorough description of the liturgical practice in this version of the Virtues of the Mass is worth quoting in full.The ix vertew is pardon as y hopeXl dais y grauntid by the popeYf thow kisshe what euer it beAt verbum caro apon this knee(Rawl. poet. 32, f. 36r)
The insistence on the pardon-earning nature of the practice due to the indulgence given by Pope Clement V is pervasive, as Christ will bring the participant to dwell in eternal bliss. These fifteenth-century Virtues of the Mass examples, all emphasizing the pardon as the devotional focus, suggest that the practice of reading John’s Gospel a second time had percolated as much in monastic milieux such as Lydgate’s as in the parish churches of London10.And Seynt John his gospell for to herÞou take goode hedeThe which gospell clerkes alleIn principio þe hit calleA nobyll þyngeAnd gret pardoun shalt þou se encrestAt verbum caro factum estThat worthy wordeThan shulde alle knele boþe most and lestTo benche or bordeTo stok or stone to stole or treTo erthe or walle what so hit beKysse hit lovelyA twelf moneth pardoun have schall þeAnd dayes fourtyThe pope þat gaf and granted þisHyghte Clement þe fyfte I wysseHys soule God yeldeThe childe þat best ys brynge us to blysWith hym to byelde(f. 27v)
3. Lydgate’s Paraliturgical Lyrics
4. Lydgate’s Contemplative Modes
The joy of being united to God in “all felicité” is at the heart of contemplation, it is contemplation in its purest form, and in this case the term implies vision of God. The pageant ends with this very beatific vision which is represented as “Joie, laude, rest, pees, and parfite unité/Triumphes of eternalle victorie/With fruicioun of the Trynite/By contemplacioun of Hys Glorie” (ll. 168–171). However, as foreshadowed in the former extract from Margaret of Anjou, the beatific vision as a “gostly suffisaunce”, a spiritual contentment, can only take place when “the world is made disseveraunce”, once one has died. Lydgate’s closest reference to the beatific vision in his use of the term contemplation can be found in The Legend of St. Austin at Compton (NIMEV 1875; see Whatley 2001; Hurley 2021). In the poem, Augustine gives the choice to a priest, who was resurrected in order to give penance to an excommunicated knight, to join him to preach the faith of Christ or to go back to the grave. The priest responds without hesitation: “Unto my grave I may restooryd be/…/Tabyde in reste from worldly perturbaunce” (Lydgate 1911, p. 204, ll. 364, 368). He then adds:… all felicitéWithouten ende eternally t’endureContemplacioun of the Deité,Which noon erthely langage may discure (reveal),God beholden of hys creature,Whiche aperteneth to gostly suffisaunce,Whan from the worlde is made disseveraunce.
Having joined the Church sleeping in purgatory until called forth on judgment day to join the Church triumphant in heaven, the priest is already experiencing the joys of heavenly contemplation as a foretaste of what is to come. Affirming that the beatific vision can only be attained in the afterlife, Lydgate upholds the conservative views of the Church and distances himself from any heterodox views that creeped into fourteenth-century visionary writings in England influenced by the beatific vision controversies12.I reste in pees and take of nothing keep,Rejoisshe in quiete and Contemplacioun,Voyd of al trouble, celestial is my sleep,And by the meene of Cristes passioun,Feith, hoope, and Charite, and hool affecioun,Been pilwes foure to reste upon by grace,Day of the general resurrectioun,Whan Gabriel callith tappeere a-forn his face.(ll. 369–376)
“Ye folkys all” denotes a shift in contemplative performance beyond the walls of the cloister or the anchoritic cell. As pointed out by Eleanor Johnson, in the later Middle Ages in England, contemplation is no longer confined to the vowed religious living in solitude but is open to anyone seeking to know God intimately (Johnson 2018, p. 2). As such, “contemplation is increasingly a practice urged on all Christians” (Johnson 2018, p. 12), or as Vincent Gillespie puts it: “Merchants could aspire to contemplation as legitimately as monks” (Gillespie 2011b, p. 177). Not only does Lydgate insist on the broad nature of his audience, but the act of contemplation is also here disconnected from bookish study. Jennifer Bryan has read “inward contemplation” as a means to understand the priest’s garments and actions (Bryan 2008, p. 58). Jennifer Garrison has argued furthermore that Lydgate invites his readers in this first eight-line stanza to self-reflection based on the priest’s own spiritual preparation for the mass (Garrison 2017, p. 165). Based on the unequivocal associations that Lydgate adjoins to the term “contemplation” as seen above, an invitation to meditate on priestly vestments or to focus on the self (apart from self-introspection leading to penitence) would seem inappropriate in such context. “Inward contemplacion” which should be pursued in great pains, diligently (“besy cure”), here belongs to the semantic field of prayerful reading. Lydgate expects his audience to mirror the priest, who through prayerful rumination of holy scripture prepares himself to celebrate mass. However, instead of dedicating themselves to the process of lectio divina throughout the ceremony, they are invited to meditate on an image of Christ’s passion.Ye folkys all, whyche haue deuociounTo here masse, furst do your besy cureWith all your inward contemplacion,As in a myrrour presentyng in fygureThe morall menyng of that gostly armure,When that a preest, with mynystres more & lasse,Arayeth hymsylf, by record of scripture,The same howre when he shall go to masse(p. 87, ll. 1–8)
While “doctors remembre in theyr doctryne”, lay people and non-Latinate clergy ought to ruminate on an image. With the survival of more than 250 complete and partial copies of the Wycliffite Bible, one cannot deny that Middle English translations of the Bible were in circulation throughout most of Lydgate’s monastic life (Solopova et al. 2020, p. xv). However, Lydgate makes no reference to the laity’s access to Holy Scriptures in the vernacular. Rather, he encourages them to use images as the source of their meditation. Visualization by and of itself becomes a form of prayer technique. References to pictures as the books of the laity appear as early as in the writings of Gregory the Great (c. 540–604), since “a picture provides for uneducated people looking at it… what they should follow” (Gregory the Great 2004, p. 745). According to Thomas Aquinas, images had a threefold purpose: they instructed, they were essential for memorization, and finally they stirred people to devotion (Aquinas 1933, p. 312)13. Hence, Lydgate’s parallelism between the audience who ought to remember the passion visually and the doctors who remember their doctrine within the context of the liturgy points to one and the same thing. Both the crucified Christ—the flesh on the cross—and the biblical account—the words on the page—, which is the grounding for Christian doctrine, when contemplated upon lead to “gostly gladnesse”, the ultimate goal of contemplation (Boersma 2023, pp. 13–17).Furst, with your eyen verray contemplatyfe,Calleth to mynde, of hole affeccioun,Howe the masse here in thys present lyfeOf gostly gladnesse ys chyef direccioun,To haue memory of Crystes passioun,As doctors remembre in theyr doctryne,Geyne gostly sekenesses oure restauracioun,Our bawmne, our tryacle, our helthe, our medycyne(p. 87, ll. 9–16)
5. Kissing as Contemplative Threshold
While bodily gestures of kneeling, making the sign of the cross in front of or on one’s mouth, and kissing earth, iron, wood or stone affirm the embodied grounding of the act of contemplation, the heart is to be elevated towards the seat of transcendence, towards God, and the mind occupied with Christ’s passion. This exercise of performative meditation, a kinetic lectio domini, demands a complete absorption in the act of contemplation. Lydgate insists on the somatic nature of the procedure. It requires “All yowre body” in order to demonstrate a posture of humility and submission to the lordship of God in the act of contemplation: a full bodily orientation towards the divine. Likewise, the life of the mind is also necessitated in its totality, the contemplative practice entails full attention and concentration, “with all your inward contemplacion”. Throughout, the fourteen verses of the first chapter of the Gospel of John have to be listened to. Rather than being a soundtrack in the background of a contemplative exercise, these very words as an aural layer juxtaposed to kinetics, touch, inward sight, and attention were in fact binding as the very catalyst of contemplation.Your hertes ey lyft vp in-to the Est,All yowre body and knees boweth downe,When the preest seyth Verbum caro factum est,With all your inward contemplacion,Your mowthe furst crossyd of high deuocion,Kyssyng the tokens rehersyd here toforn,And euer haue mynde on Crystes passionWhyche for your sake weryd a crowne of thorne
In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum. Omnia per ipsum facta sunt: et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod factum est. In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum: et lux in tenebris lucet, et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt… Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis: et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis.(Vulgate, John 1.1–5, 14)
Instead of introducing this biblical passage by its incipit “In principio” as he does in his Virtues of the Mass, Lydgate refers to the verses that introduce the Incarnation. “Et Verbum caro factum est”, the Word made flesh, immateriality becoming matter, the divine becoming human, is the great mystery that makes contemplation possible. This insistence on the Incarnation suggests that “Verbum caro factum est” inaugurates a liminal space where encounter between immateriality and matter, the divine and human is made possible. And this liminal place is at the heart of the ritual which Lydgate translates and expounds. Lydgate’s endeavor is hence twofold. Not only does he invite his audience to contemplate Christ’s incarnation, but he also makes the Latin biblical text accessible to his readers with little or no Latin literacy by revealing the spiritual meaning of the introduction to the Gospel of John. “To kysse stone or tre/Erthe or yron” as Lydgate explains is as much to offer a performative response to the Johannine prologue as to enter a locus of encounter, as the kiss itself in the context of the mass is a sign of the Incarnation.In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life: and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness: and the darkness did comprehend it… And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.(Douay-Rheims)
The wood’s tropological meaning is fourfold just as the cross is made of four different types of trees. Cedar and cypress signify “hygh estates and folks of lowe degrees” (l. 11), and olive wood is a sign of reconciliation between the latter (l. 12), but ultimately reconciliation between God and humanity which is the intrinsic meaning of the cross. Lydgate’s insistence “Looke on thes signes and haue them in memory” (l. 14) implies that the tropological meanings of the types of wood have to be assimilated, which is to say that Lydgate invites his readers to reconciliation with God and one another, because of Christ’s abasement in the incarnation and passion. Lydgate ends his stanza by distancing himself from devotional passion images of the time and their emphasis on suffering by offering a theological reflection on the cross’s achievement: Christ’s victory as represented by the palm tree.Thynke on the crosse, made of four dyuerse trees.As Clerkes seyn, of Cedyr and Cypresse,To hygh estates and folkes of lowe degreesCryst brought in pease, the Olyfe bereth wytnesse;Namly whan vertu conserveth his grennesseLooke on thes signes and haue them in memoryHow crystys passioun was groundyd on meeknesseAnd how the palme ffygured his victorye.(ll. 9–16)20
6. Conclusions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
1 | |
2 | All the following references to Boffey and Edwards 2005 hereafter will only refer to the lyrics’ references, e.g., NIMEV 4245. |
3 | |
4 | Orthopraxis relates to the rightness of religious actions in their performative nature, and in this case to the “right-doing” of the liturgy, see OED (Oxford English Dictionary). |
5 | The lyric appears in the following manuscripts: Cambridge, Gonville & Caius College, MS 174/95, p. 455; Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q.G.8, f. 72r; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20, p. 362; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21, f. 215r; London, British Library, MS Addit. 34360, ff. 68r–68v; London, British Library, MS Harley 2251, ff. 9r–9v; London, British Library, MS Harley 2255, ff. 113v–114r; Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354, pp. 331–32; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 59, f. 56v; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 683, ff. 87v–88r. |
6 | John Shirley copied Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 59, while the “Hammond scribe” copied London, British Library, MS Addit. 34360, London, British Library, MS Harley 2251, as well as Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21 alongside the “Trinity Anthologies scribe”, (see Mooney 2001). On John Shirley, (see Connolly 1998). On the “Hammond Scribe” and his access to some of Shirley’s anthologies, (see Mooney 2003). |
7 | Although Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21 begins with a booklet with the basic catechism of the church, this booklet circulated on its own prior to being assembled with other booklets such as the one containing On Kissing. (See Mooney 2001; James-Maddocks 2022). |
8 | This lack of reference to the indulgence should not be understood as a latent criticism, on the contrary. Lydgate uses an indulgence in his lyric On the Image of Pity (NIMEV 2588) in order to respond to Lollard critiques of images and affirm his lyric’s textuality. |
9 | The liturgical practice of kissing at Verbum caro factum est is mentioned or glossed in the following manuscripts of the Virtues of the Mass corpus: New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317, ff. 2r, 27v, 28v; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. I, f. 303v; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet. 32, f. 36r. |
10 | On the London provenance of Rawl. poet. 32, see Boffey (2012, p. 65). |
11 | |
12 | On the beatific vision controversies, see Kerby-Fulton (2006, especially pp. 365–74); Walker Bynum (1995, especially pp. 283–91). |
13 | The exact reference is to the third book on the Sentences, dist. 9, q. 1, art. 2, resp. to quaestiuncula 2. |
14 | Similarly, a shift can be noticed in Margery Kempe’s devotional attitude during Mass. Whereas as the beginning of The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery prays the liturgy of the Hours à haute voix in church, further on she turns her attention to inward devotions which she calls “meditacyon” suggesting that she has internalized the liturgy to such extent that she is then able to ruminate on it. (Kempe 1940, p. 216). |
15 | |
16 | TCC, MS R.3.21, f. 215r; MS Ashmole 59, f. 56r; MS Laud misc. 683, f. 87v. |
17 | On the image of pity in Middle English literature, see Duffy (1992, pp. 108–9, 238–43). |
18 | See for example the later fourteenth-century English missal, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 1, with its liturgical office of the Five Wounds on ff. 221r–22v. |
19 | See ff. 109r–110r. |
20 | Rather than following MacCracken’s edition for lines 13–16, which relies on five versions of the poem that omit the fourth kind of tree, suggesting some missing lines filled in at a later stage or plainly miscopied lines, I have drawn on the other five versions which uphold the stanza’s coherence. |
21 | |
22 | See for example Cecily Neville’s will which reveals “an elaborate, extraordinarily well-provisioned liturgical establishment” (Perry and Tuck 2016, pp. 145–46). |
References
Manuscripts
Cambridge, Gonville & Caius, MS 174/95Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q.G.8Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.21London, British Library, MS Addit. 34360London, British Library, MS Addit. 37049London, British Library, MS Harley 2251London, British Library, MS Harley 2255New Haven, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS 317Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add. A. 268Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add. E. 4Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 59Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 750Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 100Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a. 1Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 1Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 683Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lyell 30Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. liturg. d. 1Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet. 32Primary and Secondary Sources
- Amsler, Mark. 2011. Affective Literacies: Writing and Multilingualism in the Late Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols. [Google Scholar]
- Aquinas, Thomas. 1933. Scriptum Super Sententiis III. Edited by R. P. Maria Fabianus Moos. Paris: Sumptibus P. Lethielleux. [Google Scholar]
- Atchley, E. G. Cuthbert F. 1900. Some Notes on the Beginning and Growth of the Usage of a Second Gospel at Mass. Transaction of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society 4: 161–76. [Google Scholar]
- Bale, Anthony P. 2002. “House Devil, Town Saint”, Anti-Semitism and Hagiography in Medieval Suffolk. In Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings. Edited by Sheila Delany. New York: Routledge, pp. 185–210. [Google Scholar]
- Barron, Caroline M. 1985. The Parish Fraternities of Medieval London. In The Church in Pre-Reformation Society: Essays in Honour of F. R. H. Du Boulay. Edited by Caroline M. Barron and Christopher Harper-Bill. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 13–37. [Google Scholar]
- Barron, Caroline M. 2016. What Did Medieval London Merchants Read? In Medieval Merchants and Money: Essays in Honour of James L. Bolton. Edited by Martin Allen and Matthew Davies. London: University of London Press, pp. 43–70. [Google Scholar]
- Bernard of Clairvaux. 2010. Song of Songs I. Translated by Kilian Walsh. Piscataway: Gorgias Press. [Google Scholar]
- Boersma, Hans. 2023. Pierced by Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition. Bellingham: Lexham Press. [Google Scholar]
- Boffey, Julia. 1996. Short Texts in Manuscripts Anthologies: The Minor Poems of John Lydgate in Two Fifteenth-Century Collections. In The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany. Edited by Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, pp. 69–82. [Google Scholar]
- Boffey, Julia. 2012. Manuscript and Print in London c. 1465–1530. London: The British Library. [Google Scholar]
- Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards. 2005. New Index of Middle English Verse. London: British Library. [Google Scholar]
- Boffey, Julia, and John J. Thompson. 1989. Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts. In Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475. Edited by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 279–315. [Google Scholar]
- Bryan, Jennifer. 2008. Looking Inward, Devotional Reading and the Private Self in Late Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar]
- Camille, Michael. 1991. Gothic Signs and the Surplus: The Kiss on the Cathedral. Yale French Studies 79: 151–70. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Chan, Antje Elisa. 2023. The Virtues of the Mass: A Taxonomy of a Late Middle English Genre of Liturgical Significance. Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 49: 77–115. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Connolly, Margaret. 1998. John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England. Aldershot: Ashgate. [Google Scholar]
- Despres, Denise L. 2010. Sacramentals and Ghostly Sights. Religion & Literature 42: 101–10. [Google Scholar]
- Dickinson, Francis Henry. 1861. Missale ad usum insignis et praeclarae ecclesiae Sarum. Burntisland: Pitsligo. [Google Scholar]
- Duffy, Eamon. 1992. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Durandus, William. 1995. Rationale Divinorum Officiorum I–IV. Edited by Anselmus Davril and Timothy M. Thibodeau. Turnhout: Brepols. [Google Scholar]
- Flanigan, C. Clifford. 2001. The Moving Subject: Medieval Liturgical Processions in Semiotic and Cultural Perspective. In Moving Subjects, Processional Performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Edited by Kathleen Ashley and Wim Hüsken. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 35–51. [Google Scholar]
- Flanigan, C. Clifford, Kathleen Ashley, and Pamela Sheingorn. 2005. Liturgy as Social Performance: Expanding the Definitions. In The Liturgy of the Medieval Church. Edited by Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, pp. 635–52. [Google Scholar]
- Ganim, John M. 2008. Lydgate, Location, and the Poetics of Exemption. In Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century. Edited by Lisa H. Cooper and Andrea Denny-Brown. New York: Palgrave, pp. 165–83. [Google Scholar]
- Garrison, Jennifer. 2017. Challenging Communion: The Eucharist and Middle English Literature. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Gayk, Shannon. 2006. Images of Pity: The Regulatory Aesthetics of John Lydgate’s Religious Lyrics. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28: 175–203. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Gillespie, Alexandra. 2003. Balliol MS 354: Histories of the Book at the End of the Middle Ages. Poetica 60: 47–62. [Google Scholar]
- Gillespie, Vincent. 2011a. Lukynge in Haly Bukes: Lectio in Some Late Medieval Spiritual Miscellanies. In Looking in Holy Books: Essays on Late Medieval Religious Writing in England. Turnout: Brepols. [Google Scholar]
- Gillespie, Vincent. 2011b. 1412–1534: Culture and History. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism. Edited by Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 163–93. [Google Scholar]
- Gillespie, Vincent. 2019. Lectio domini: Learning to Read Christ the Book in Late Medieval England. Paper presented at Harlaxton Medieval Symposium, Harlaxton, UK, July 22–25. [Google Scholar]
- Gregory the Great. 2004. The Letters of Gregory the Great, Books 10–14, vol. 3. Translated by John R. C. Martyn. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. [Google Scholar]
- Hanna, Ralph. 2015. The Sizes of Middle English Books, ca. 1390–1430. Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 18: 181–91. [Google Scholar]
- Harvey, Margaret. 2006. Religious Life in Late Medieval Durham. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. [Google Scholar]
- Heale, Nicholas. 1998. John Lydgate, Monk of Bury St Edmunds, as Spiritual Director. In The Vocation of Service to God and Neighbour. Edited by Joan Greatrex. Turnhout: Brepols. [Google Scholar]
- Hurley, Gina Marie. 2021. The Practice of Tithing and the Resurrection of Clerical Authority in Lydgate’s Saint Austin at Compton. Medium Aevum 90: 70–91. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- James-Maddocks, Holly. 2022. Scribes and Booklets: The “Trinity Anthologies” Reconsidered. In Scribal Cultures in Late Medieval England, Essays in Honour of Linne R. Mooney. Edited by Margaret Connolly, Holly James-Maddocks and Derek Pearsall. York: York Medieval Press, pp. 146–79. [Google Scholar]
- Johnson, Eleanor. 2018. Staging Contemplation, Participatory Theology in Middle English Prose, Verse, and Drama. Chicago: The University Press of Chicago. [Google Scholar]
- Karnes, Michelle. 2007. Nicholas Love and Medieval Meditations on Christ. Speculum 82: 380–408. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Kempe, Margery. 1940. The Book of Margery Kempe. Edited by Sanford Brown Meech and Hope Emily Allen. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. 2006. Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. [Google Scholar]
- Kipling, Gordon. 1982. The London Pageants for Margaret of Anjou: A Medieval Script Restored. Medieval English Theatre 4: 5–27. [Google Scholar]
- Lagorio, Valerie M., and Michael G. Sargent. 1993. English Mystical Writings. In A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500, vol. 9. Edited by Albert E. Hartung. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Science, pp. 3049–137. [Google Scholar]
- Laugerud, Henning. 2015. Memory: The Sensory Materiality of Belief and Understanding in Late Medieval Europe. In The Saturated Sensorium: Principles of Perception and Mediation in the Middle Ages. Edited by Hans Henrik Lohfert Jørgensen, Henning Laugerud and Laura Katrine Skinnebach. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 247–73. [Google Scholar]
- Leclercq, Jean. 1982. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 3rd ed. New York: Fordham University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Lydgate, John. 1911. The Minor Poems of John Lydgate. Edited by Henry Noble MacCracken. EETS E.S. 112. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & CO. [Google Scholar]
- Lydgate, John. 2010. Mummings and Entertainments. Edited by Claire Sponsler. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications. [Google Scholar]
- Lyndwood, William. 1679. Provinciale seu constitutions Angliae. Edited by John Acton. Oxford: H. Hall. [Google Scholar]
- McNamer, Sarah. 2011. Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. [Google Scholar]
- Meyer-Lee, Robert J. 2006. Lydgate’s Laureate Prose. In John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England. Edited by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 36–60. [Google Scholar]
- Mirk, John. 1974. John Mirk’s Instructions for Parish Priests. Edited by Gillis Kristensson. Lund: CWK Gleerup. [Google Scholar]
- Mooney, Linne R. 2001. Scribes and Booklets of Trinity College, Cambridge, Manuscripts R.3.19 and R.3.21. In Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions, Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall. Edited by Alastair J. Minnis. York: York Medieval Press, pp. 241–66. [Google Scholar]
- Mooney, Linne R. 2003. John Shirley’s Heirs. The Yearbook of English Studies 33: 182–98. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Nissé, Ruth. 2006. “What is not Routhe to Se?”: Lydgate and the Styles of Martyrdom. In John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England. Edited by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 279–98. [Google Scholar]
- Nolan, Maura. 2005. John Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Pearsall, Derek. 1970. John Lydgate. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. [Google Scholar]
- Perella, Nicolas James. 1969. The Kiss Sacred and Profane, An Interpretative History of Kiss Symbolism and Related Religio-Erotic Themes. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. [Google Scholar]
- Perry, Ryan. 2011. “Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke”: The Cultural Locations of Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Tradition. Speculum 86: 419–54. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Perry, Ryan, and Lawrence Tuck. 2016. “[W]heþyr þu redist er herist redyng, I wil be plesyd wyth þe”: Margery Kempe and the Locations for Middle English Devotional Reading and Hearing. In Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England. Edited by Mary C. Flannery and Carrie Griffin. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 133–48. [Google Scholar]
- Pfaff, Richard William. 1970. New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]
- Reid, Alcuin. 2016. The A–Z of the Study of Catholic Liturgy. In T&T Companion to Liturgy. Edited by Alcuin Reid. London: Bloomsbury. [Google Scholar]
- Renevey, Denis. 2022. Devotion to the Name of Jesus in Medieval English Literature, c. 1100–c. 1530. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Rice, Nicole R. 2007. Walter Hilton’s Mixed Life and the Transformation of Clerical Discipline. Leeds Studies in English 38: 143–69. [Google Scholar]
- Rice, Nicole R. 2008. Lay Piety and Religious Discipline in Middle English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Riyeff, Jacob. 2016. “Tenlumyne” the Laetabundus: John Lydgate as Benedictine Poet. Journal of English and Germanic Philoloy 115: 370–93. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Riyeff, Jacob. 2019. De modo meditandi vel contemplandi: A Pedagocial Treatise for Novices from Bury St. Edmunds in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 240. Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 45: 139–82. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Robertson, Duncan. 2011. Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading. Collegeville: Liturgical Press. [Google Scholar]
- Sargent, Michael G. 2019. Affective Reading and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection at Syon. In Reading and Writing in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Mary C. Erler. Edited by Martin Chase and Maryanne Kowaleski. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, pp. 130–49. [Google Scholar]
- Scanlon, Larry, and James Simpson, eds. 2006. John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. [Google Scholar]
- Simmons, Thomas Frederick. 1879. Notes. In The Lay Folks Mass Book or the Manner of Hearing Mass. Edited by Thomas Frederick Simmons. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 155–315. [Google Scholar]
- Solopova, Elizabeth, Jeremy Catto, and Anne Hudson, eds. 2020. From the Vulgate to the Vernacular: Four Debates on an English Question c. 1400. Oxford: Bodleian Library. [Google Scholar]
- Somerset, Fiona. 2006. “Hard is with seyntis for to make affray”: Lydgate the “Poet-Propagandist” as Hagiographer. In John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England. Edited by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 258–78. [Google Scholar]
- Swanson, Robert N. 2006. Praying the Pardon: Devotional Indulgences in Late Medieval England. In Promisory Notes on the Treasury of Merits, Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe. Edited by Robert N. Swanson. Leiden: Brill, pp. 215–40. [Google Scholar]
- Varnam, Laura. 2018. The Church as Sacred Space in Middle English Literature and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Walker Bynum, Caroline. 1995. The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336. New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Walter, Katie L. 2018. Middle English Mouths: Late Medieval Medical, Religious, and Literary Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Watson, Nicholas. 1999. The Middle English Mystics. In The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Edited by David Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 539–65. [Google Scholar]
- Watson, Nicholas. 2011. Introduction. In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism. Edited by Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–28. [Google Scholar]
- Whatley, E. Gordon. 2001. John Lydgate’s Saint Austin at Compton: The Poem and its Sources. In Anglo-Latin and its Heritage: Essays in Honor of A. G. Rigg on His 64th Birthday. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 191–227. [Google Scholar]
- Woolf, Rosemary. 1998. The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press. [Google Scholar]
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Chan, A.E. Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation. Religions 2024, 15, 119. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010119
Chan AE. Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation. Religions. 2024; 15(1):119. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010119
Chicago/Turabian StyleChan, Antje Elisa. 2024. "Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation" Religions 15, no. 1: 119. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010119
APA StyleChan, A. E. (2024). Kissing Matter: John Lydgate’s Lyric On Kissing at Verbum caro factum est and the Democratization of Contemplation. Religions, 15(1), 119. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010119