Abstract
This inquiry into lay or popular religion in the fifteenth century is a brief on behalf of Margaret Mautby Paston. If we wish to reconstruct the religious life of the late medieval English laity, whether female or male, it is hard to do much better than to follow in her footsteps, foot-steps she has left by way of her 100-plus extant letters and her long and elaborate will of 1482.1 These documents, set and read in the context of the Paston family letters and papers, provide an epistolary or literary pathway into a territory of religious expression and conviction that stretches in time from Margaret’s earliest letters, written as a newlywed and newcomer to the Paston family enterprise in the early 1440s, through her final missives of the late 1470s and her will, written two years before her death in November 1484. In adopting this approach we are in effect signing on for the long march; case studies are not easily constructed for medieval women and men.2 Accordingly, I recognize from the start that the journey is going to be one that lacks those high points of spiritual drama and personal revelation that others of Margaret’s day and world sometimes provide. If the choice I am making in this study is between siding with the tortoise or with the hare, there is no question but that I come down, quite firmly, on behalf of the former.
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Notes
Norman Davis, ed., The Paston Letters and Papers (2 vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971–1976). This is the basic edition I use and the letters are cited throughout these essays by volume and number, not by pages.
The older edition by James Gairdner is used on occasion: James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters, 1422–1509 A.D. (3 vols., Westminster: Constable, 1895).
There is now a third volume to round out Davis’s work: Richard Beadle and Colin Richmond, eds., The Paston Letters, III, EETS, s.s. 22 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) (referred to as III, below, when cited). For a brief summary of Margaret’s life, see my pamphlet, Margaret Paston, Matriarch of the Paston Family (Dereham, Norfolk: Larks Press, 2009).
Though the data rarely lend themselves to an individualized case study, there are some useful papers: Michael Hicks, “The Piety of Margaret, Lady Hungerford (d. 1478),” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38 (1987), pp. 19–38
W. Mark Ormrod, “The Personal Religion of Edward III,” Speculum 64 (1989), pp. 849–77
Rachel Gibbons, “The Piety of Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France, 1385–1422,” in Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages, ed., Diana E. S. Dunn (Stroud: Sutton, 1996), pp. 205–24; and for a longer and more discursive treatment
Jonathan Hughes, The Religious Life of Richard III: Piety and Prayer in the North of England (Stroud: Sutton, 1997). On the limits of “know-ability” in such matters
Deborah Youngs, Humphrey Newton (1466–1539): An Early Tudor Gentleman (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008): Despite the preservation of Newton’s commonplace book, we have the caveat: “It may not offer a window into his soul but it does shine a spotlight on several aspects of his spirituality and the influence the Church had upon his everyday actions. We can see what he knew of Christianity, what he was particularly devoted to; we can consider his contemplative and active piety and assess the relationship between is person devotion and communal practice.”
The interesting story ofthe preservation, publication, dispersal, and reunification of (most of) the letters is told by David Stoker, “‘Innumerable Letters of Good Consequence in History:’ The Discovery and First Publication of the Paston Letters,” The Library, sixth series, 17 (1995), pp. 107–55; Davis also covers this ground, I, xxiv–xxxv.
Charles L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), p. 199, suggesting that it was John I, trained in law and apt to have an eye for any opportunity that might come along, who saw the wisdom of collecting and preserving the papers. I naturally lean toward the idea that it was Margaret’s idea and her initiative.
Gairdner, I, xxix; Colin Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 88
Roger Virgoe, Private Life in the Fifteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 140, 158.
Kingsford, Historical Literature, p. 206 for a positive assessment of Margaret as wife and mother. For another assessment, Joan W. Kirby, “Women in the Plumpton Correspondence: Fiction and Reality,” in Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to John Taylor, ed. Ian Wood and Graham A. Loud (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 219–32; p. 220, “Margaret Paston, for example, emerges as loving wife, hard-headed manager, harsh parent and stout-hearted defend of the family’s ‘livelode’.”
Typicality, of course, is the presumed bedrock of social history. For some skepticism about Margaret’s typicality and the pitfalls of generalizing from her life, Helen Jewell, Women in Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 229–32, and
Rowena E. Archer, “Piety in Question: Noblewomen and Religion in the Later Middle Ages,” in Women and Religion in Medieval England, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford: Oxbow, 2003), pp. 118–40. However, Colin Richmond argues for her typicality as one of her strengths or positive aspects, Endings, pp. 88–127.
Norman Davis, “The Language of the Pastons,” Proceedings of the British Academy 40 (1955), pp. 120–44. Davis had a particular interest in the letters and writing of the women (which primarily means Margaret and then Agnes) and he held that the language of their letters, despite their consistent use of scribes, was much like their spoken language
Davis, “The Text of Margaret Paston’s Letters,” Medium Aevum 18 (1949), pp. 13–28
Davis, “A Scribal Problem in the Paston Letters,” English and Germanic Studies 4 (1951–52), pp. 31–64
Davis, “Margaret Paston’s Use of ‘Do’,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73 (1972), pp. 55–62.
Defending Margaret as an author worthy of attention, in Davis’s edition of the Paston letters, 167 pages are devoted to her letters (with the usual editorial additions) and she offers us some 60,000 words. In pages, this compares with 96 pages devoted to John I, 126 for John II, and 112 for John III (and the men all have many more other-than-letters among their documents). In recent surveys of women as authors and of medieval authors in general, Margaret has finally begun to receive some notice: Janet Todd, British Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide (New York: Continuum, 1989), pp. 529–30
Lorna Sage, Cambridge Guide to Women’s Writing in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 491–92
Paul and June Schlueter, eds., An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), pp. 505–6.
Margaret Paston was omitted from Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, The Feminist Companion to Literature in England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), though Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich were both covered. The ODNB devotes space to Margaret but only as she is folded into the general entry on the family (written by Colin Richmond); John I and John II merit individual entries.
Ian Jack, “The Ecclesiastical Patronage Exercised by a Baronial Family in the Late Middle Ages,” Journal of Religious History 3 (1965), pp. 275–90
Nigel Saul, Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and their Monuments, 1300–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
Michael Hicks, “Piety and Lineage in the Wars of the Roses: The Hungerford Experience,” in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths and James Sherborne (London: Sutton, 1986), pp. 80–108
and Hicks, “Four Studies in Conventional Piety,” Southern History 13 (1991), pp. 1–21.
H. S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England: Studies in an Age of Transition (first edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922): chapter 14 for “Religion,” chapter 15 for “The Secular Clergy,” and chapter 16 for “The Regular Clergy.”
H. S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England; David Knowles, “The Religion of the Pastons,” Downside Review 42 (1924), pp. 143–63
Gillian Pritchard, “Religion and the Pastons,” in Daily Life in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Richard Britnell (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 65–82. Colin Richmond comments on the various Pastons, in passing, Endings.
Colin Richmond, “Religion and the Fifteenth-Century English Gentleman,” in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Barrie Dobson (Gloucester: Sutton, 1984), pp. 198–208
Richmond, “The English Gentry and Religion, c. 1500,” in Religious Belief and Ecclesiastical Careers, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1981), pp. 121–50.
For a contrary view, Christine Carpenter, “The Religion of the Gentry in Fifteenth-Century England,” in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxon Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), pp. 53–74
and, more recently, Christine Carpenter, “Religion,” in Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 134–50
Eamon Duffy, “Religious Belief,” in A Social History of England, 1200–1500, ed. Rosemary Horrox and W. Mark Ormrod (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 293–339
Colin Richmond, “Religion,” in Fifteenth-Century Attitudes, ed. Rosemary Horrox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 183–201
Hilary M. Carey, “Devout Literate Laypeople and the Pursuit of the Mixed Life in Later Medieval England,” Journal of Religious History 14 (1987), pp. 361–81
Peter Fleming, “Charity, Faith, and the Gentry of Kent, 1422–1529,” in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. Tony Pollard (Gloucester: Sutton, 1984), pp. 36–58
Nigel Saul, Knights and Squires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), still at the head of the queue for the treatment of popular and lay religion and belief in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
A quick survey ofwomen in East Anglian religious life: Joel T. Rosenthal, “Local Girls Do It Better: Women and Religion in Late Medieval East Anglia,” in Tradition and Transformation in Late Medieval England, ed. Douglas Biggs, Sharon D. Michalove, and A. Compton Reeves (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 1–20
Norman Tanner, The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1390–1532 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984).
For the neighboring county, Judith Middleton-Stewart, Inward Purity and Outward Splendour: Death and Remembrance in the Deanery of Dunwich, Suffolk, 1370–1547 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001).
Edmund College and James Walsh, eds., A Book of Showings to the Anchoress Julian of Norwich (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1978)
Nicholas Watson and Jacquiline Jenkins, eds., The Writings of Julian of Norwich (University Park, IL: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), to scratch the surface of recent work; for guid-ance to recent work
Liz McAvoy, ed., A Companion to Julian of Norwich (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008).
For the historian, for help amidst the deluge of Kempiana, Anthony Goodman, Margery Kempe and her World (London: Longman, 2002)
John H. Arnold and Katherine Lewis, eds., A Companion to “The Book of Margery Kempe” (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004)
Rayn Possell, “Margery Kempe: An Exemplar of Late Medieval Piety,” Catholic Historical Review 89 (2003), pp. 1–29, with thanks to Maryanne Kowaleski for this reference.
Much still of interest in the introduction to the Penguin edition: Barry A. B. A. Windeatt, trans., The Boke of Margery Kempe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, London, 1985).
For an alternative lifestyle and choice, Kim M. Phillips, “Desiring Virgins: Martyrs and Femininity in Late Medieval England,” in Youth in the Middle Ages, ed. P. J. P. Goldberg and Felicity Riddy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 45–59
Sarah Salih, Visions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001).
Helen Castor, Blood and Roses (London: Faber & Faber, 2004), p. 95, on Margaret’s unhappy condition during her fifth pregnancy.
Samuel Moore, “Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk, c. 1450,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 27 (1912), pp. 188–207, and 28 (1913), pp. 79–105
K. K. Jambek, “Patterns of Women’s Literary Patronage: England, 1200-ca. 1475,” in The Cultural Patronage of Late Medieval Women, ed. June Hall McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 228–65
Mary Serjeantson, ed., Osbern Bokenham: Legendys of Hooly Wummen, EETS, o.s. 208 (1938)
Simon Horobin, “Politics, Patronage, and Piety in the Work of Osbern Bokenham,” Speculum 82 (2008), pp. 932–49.
For Capgrave, Karen A. Winsted, John Capgrave’s Fifteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).
Mary Erler, Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Jennifer Bryan, Looking Inward: Devotional Reading and Private Self in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).
For an example of other issues that can be pursued and of other questions we can address, when the extant material permit, Elizabeth Noble, The World of the Stonors: A Gentry Society (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009). Both social networks and domestic arrangements are explicated at some length in this study.
For the other collections of family letters: Christine Carpenter, ed., Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers, 1290–1483 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) (cited hereafter as “Stonor”)
Joan Kirby, ed., The Plumpton Letters and Papers, Camden Society, fifth series, 8 (1990) (“Plumpton”)
Alison Hanham, ed., The Cely Letters, 1472–1488, EETS, o.s. 273 (1975) (“Cely”); and all references below are to the letters as numbered by the respective editors, not to pages.
Also, Christine Carpenter, ed., The Armburgh Papers: The Brokholes Inheritance in Warwickshire, Herefordshire, and Essex, c. 1417-c. 1453 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998). For some general reflections that extend to the various collections of fifteenth-century family letters
Joel T. Rosenthal, “The Paston Letters,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature, ed. David S. Kasten (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 5 vols, IV, pp. 184–87.
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Rosenthal, J.T. (2010). Reading the Religious Life of Margaret Paston. In: Margaret Paston’s Piety. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230111462_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230111462_1
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