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Syon Abbey and its Religious Publications in the Sixteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

J. T. Rhodes
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Syon Abbey was a royal foundation established by Henry v in 1415. It was situated at Isleworth on the Thames, just across the river from the royal palace of Richmond and the Charterhouse of Sheen, and some three hours rowing time upstream from London Bridge. It was the only Bridgettine foundation in England. It was a double house consisting of sixty nuns and twenty-five men, of whom thirteen were to be priests; the abbess ruled over the whole establishment, but the confessor general, one of the priests, had spiritual jurisdiction. From the time of its foundation until its dissolution in 1539, the prestige of Syon stood high. The nuns included daughters of many well-connected families; many of the monks, like William Bonde and John Fewterer, had previously been fellows of Cambridge colleges or, like Richard Whitford, had served as chaplains to prelates and noblemen. The royal foundation and its wealth, the convenient situation close to a royal palace and within easy reach of London, the social status of the nuns and the intellectual calibre of the priests, and its high standard of religious observance all contributed to the abbey's prestige.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 11 - 25
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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26 The Myrroure qfoure Ladye, EETS ES 19, 65–70.Google Scholar

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29 STC 922. 3 Rule of saynt Augustyne sig. A iv.Google Scholar

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33 Bonde's, Pilgrymage, Bk III day 5 made extensive use of De septem donis spiritus sancti; David of Augsburg (Prestius), Bk II claims to be based on his Destructory of vice;Google Scholar Whitford translated two alphabets, STC 3273. 3, 3273. 5 and in 25412. See Distelbrink, B., Bonaventurae scripta, Rome 1975.Google Scholar

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35 STC 14553. Most of the narrative text was from Ludolphus, , Vita Christi, but the prayers were from Jordanus' Meditationes, STC 14789.Google ScholarSee Salter, E., ‘Ludolphus of Saxony and his English translator’, Medium Aevum 28 (1964), 26–35;CrossRefGoogle Scholar also Conway, A. C., ‘The Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony’, Analecta Cartusiana 34 (1976).Google Scholar

36 English recusant publications stressed their orthodoxy by insisting on due authority, citation of sources and official approbations; they too were under pressure from Protestant opponents.

37 Aston, M., Lollards and Reformers, London 1984, 212ff.Google Scholar

38 STC 21471. 5, 21472. See Reed, A. W., ‘The regulation of the book trade before the proclamation of 1538’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 15 (1918), 163–6.Google Scholar

39 Rhodes, J., ‘Private Devotion in England on the eve of the Reformation’, unpubl. PhD diss., Durham 1974, part I, ‘Protestant treatises’.Google Scholar

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41 STC 6833-36. This and most of the other works discussed in the course of this paper are described in more detail in Rhodes, ‘Private devotion’.Google Scholar

42 With seven surviving editions 1530-7, STC 25421. 8-25425. 5, it rates as the bestselling religious book of the decade. (Reprinted in Richard Whytford, vol. v, 1-62.)Google ScholarSee White, , Tudor Books of Private Devotion, 157-61 and Rhodes, ‘Private devotion’, 176ff.Google Scholar

43 E.g. Dyumallfor Devoute Soules, c. 1532, STC 6928-288, also copied in BL,Google Scholar MS Harlcy 494, but not recognised by Jolliffe, P. S., Checklist of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance, Toronto 1974, H.8, O.14;Google ScholarHilton's, Medled lyfe, STC 14041 and in 4602 and 14042;Google ScholarPantin, W. A., ‘Instructions for a devout and literate layman’, in Alexander, J.J. G. and Gibson, M. T. (eds), Medieval Learning and Literature: essays presented to R. W. Hunt, Oxford 1976.Google Scholar

44 An overt example was The Abbaye of the Holy Ghost, STC 13608. 7-13610;Google ScholarJolliffe, , Checklist, H.9 and references. Was its popularity a reflection of lay people's need?Google Scholar

45 E.g. Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community, London 1975, ch. iii;Google ScholarMartin, A. L., The Jesuit Mind, Ithaca 1988, 10–11, isf, 201-5;Google Scholar and Collinson, P., Godly People, London 1983, chs. iii, vii. The kind of minor gentry to whom the Protestant, Thomas Becon, dedicated his works of religious instruction and prayers was characteristic.Google Scholar

46 STC 25421, fo. 181, (n. 47) reprinted with introduction, Richard Whytford, vol. i, pt 2, vols ii-iv. It accuses brethren in some monasteries of writing, illuminating, painting, and making clavichords for personal profit and some nuns of sewing, embroidering, weaving, doing silk-work, teaching children and taking lodgers.Google Scholar

47 Noted but not identified by Latz, D., Glow-worm Light, Salzburg 1989,Google Scholar 21 and by Rogers, D., ‘Some early English devotional books from Cambrai’, Downside Review NS 38 (1939),Google Scholar 458-60 who failed to notice that the translation of St Bernard's De precepto et dispensation occupies fos 112-170V;Google Scholar part III section 2 of The Pype is devoted to poverty, and may be De paupertate spiriluali, although it is not admitted to be a translation.Google Scholar

48 Scrupulosity was widely discussed, e.g. in A Little Short Treatise, CUL, MS Ff. 6. 33, fo. 98v, a Syon-related MS :Google ScholarJolliffe, , Checklist, K. 4. Interestingly, Erasmus blamed Gerson for the problem of scrupulosity, STC 10498 sigs. D. 4ff, H. 4.Google ScholarSee also Kirchberger, C., ‘Scruples at confession’, Life of the Spirit 10 (1955-1956), 451-6, 504-9 and Rhodes, ‘Private Devotion’, 134-43.Google Scholar

49 STC 3274. 5, 3275-6. See Cusack, , ‘Bonde's “Consolation”‘, passim.Google Scholar

50 STC 3276. From 1506-9 Bonde was a fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, whose founder also founded the Franciscan convent of Denny, Cambridgeshire, and charged the fellows with care of the spiritual welfare of the nuns of Denny.

51 E.g. Hodnett, , English Woodcuts, nos 1515-21, ⋆1356a and Rhodes, ‘Private Devotion’, 593-618.Google Scholar

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57 About a fifth of the second edition, STC 3278, was taken up by expositions of the Pater, Ave, Creed and of the (illustrated) star of grace, tree of virtue and of vice. Similarly David of Augsburg/Thomas Prestius, Instruction of Novices and Hilton, , Scale of Perfection.Google Scholar

58 STC 3278, fo. iv, for a list of authorities and a description of the work's genesis.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid. fo.2.

61 Ibid. fo.285.

62 E.g. STC 3278 fos 289V-300. For the background: Hirsh, J. C., The Revelations of Margery Kempe, Leiden 1989, ch. iii, ‘The extension of mysticism’;Google ScholarKieckhefer, R., Unquiet Souls, Chicago 1984, ch. vi ‘Rapture and revelation’;Google ScholarRiehle, W., The Middle English Mystics, London 1981, chs vii-viii.Google Scholar

63 Notably STC 3278, Bk III, day 6, chs 45-6, 49-61.

64 Ibid.. ch. 51, fo. 247.

65 Ibid.. Bk III, day 6, chs 53-9. The same division was commonly made: e.g. Edmund's, Myrrour of the Chyrche, 1521—9, STC 965-7;Google ScholarLove's Speculum vite Cristi [in English], 1484-1530, STC 3259-67;Google ScholarThe .vii. Shedynges of the Blode of Jhesu Cryste, 1500-9, STC 14546, 14546. 3;Google ScholarSimon's Fruyte of Redempcyon, 1514-32, STC 22557-60.Google Scholar

66 STC 3278, Bk III, day 6, ch. 60. It was copied anonymously by Robert Tayour for Anne Bulkley in BL, MS Harley 494 and by a priest, B. Langforde, in Bodl. Lib., MS Wood empt. 17 (rep. in Henry Bradshaw Society xxvii [1904], in ignorance of its source). The fullest allegorical exposition of the life of Christ and the mass was in book II of Gararde's Interpretacyon and Sygnyfycacyon of the Masse, 1532, STC 11549.Google Scholar

67 STC 14553. The sixty-five prayers of the main section were from Jordanus, , Meditationes, STC 14789;Google Scholar they were copied in Latin by John Cressener in 1495, Durham University Library MS Cosin V. v. 12. The MS was later in the possession of Clemence Tresham, a nun of Syon. The English translation of Fewterer was printed separately in STC 20193. 5; see Rhodes, J., ‘Devoute prayers in englysshe of thactes of our redemption’, The Library 28 (1973), 149–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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69 E.g. Guevara's, Mount Calvarie, 1594-1618, STC 12448.5-12450.Google Scholar

70 STC 14553, fo. 57.

71 STC 3278, fos. 250V-Q51. Bonde also used the image of the construction of a ‘tonne’ or barrel, fo. 274V, citing St Thomas, Summa, I I . ii. q. clxxxiv, art. 3 and q. clxxxvi—vii; Whitford, , of course, took the figure as the basis of his Pype or Tonne.Google Scholar

72 STC 15707, 15707. 5 and in numerous MSS e.g. Bodl. Lib., MS Douce 42, Lambeth Palace Library, MSS 542, 546, BL, MS Arundel 285; it was recommended in Whitford's, Werke of Preparation, STC 25412 sig. B. 3.Google Scholar

73 STC 25421. 2-.6 on which see Horsfield, R. A., ‘The Pomander of Prayer. Aspects of late medieval Carthusian spirituality and its lay audience’, in Sargent, M. (ed.), De Cella in Seculum, Cambridge 1989.Google Scholar

74 STC 25414, Dayly Exercyse, sig. D. 6v.Google Scholar

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76 A much abbreviated copy was written out in the second half of the sixteenth century: St Paul's Cathedral, unnumbered MS.

77 The fact that the community survived can hardly have mitigated the effects of the dissolution: individuals may have retained books, but dispersal in England and the hard years of no fixed abode, nearly forty years, before they settled in Lisbon must have taken their toll on any books and manuscripts they had carried with them from England. For identified survivals see Ker, N. R., Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, London 1964.Google Scholar

78 Whitford's translation of Chrysostom was not printed until 1541 in STC 25420.

79 E.g. the pardon beads of Syon with their thirty-three words representing the years of Jesus' life; the twenty-four sections of The Dyetary, one for each hour of the day; and the seven days into which Bonde's Pilgrymage was divided.Google Scholar

80 ‘ye religion of Christe… is better and more perfectly and precisely kepte in religion monastical, than in any of the other states’: Whitford, , Pype, fo. igv. Cf. fo. 235 and Bonde, Pilgrymage, STC 3278 fo. 15V.Google Scholar