We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 February 2016
The story of Susanna and the Elders, found in the apocryphal thirteenth chapter of Daniel, part of the Greek version of the Book of Daniel, is richly suggestive of its likely appeal to poets and artists. It is set during the Babylonian Captivity and recounts events concerning the Jewish community within Babylon. Susanna is the beautiful and chaste wife of a wealthy man, Joachim, whose home serves as a seat of justice for his fellow Jews. While bathing in their garden, Susanna is spied upon and accosted by two judges of Israel who frequent her husband's house. They invite her to satisfy both of them or suffer the penalty for a charge of adultery, which they will bring against her. She refuses, saying that she would rather fall into their hands than sin in the sight of God. She is tried unveiled before the people. Led off to execution, Susanna calls out to God, who stirs up the spirit of the young Daniel. Daniel's skill in separating the elders before asking for details of their evidence against Susanna reveals their perjury, and they are put to death by the crowd. The tale is certainly courtroom drama, but it is also a narrative of transgressions — of female chastity and modesty, of the household and property, of justice itself.
1 Smith, Kathryn A., “Inventing Marital Chastity: Iconography of Susanna,” Oxford Art Journal 16 (1993): 3–24, at 3. My thanks to audiences at Fordham University and the University of Illinois for their comments about earlier versions of this essay. I also thank David Lyle Jeffrey for his astute reading for Traditio, Ralph Hanna for his comments regarding manuscripts and provenance, and Martin Chase for his encouragement.Google Scholar
2 See Tertullian, , “De corona,” ed. Kroymann, A., in Tertulliani opera , vol. 2, CL 2 (Turnholt, 1954; repr., 1996); Ambrose, , “De Joseph,” ed. Schenkl, Carolus, in Abrosii opera, CSEL 32, 2 (Prague, 1897), 73–112; “De Tobia,” ibid., 519–73; “De uiduis,” Verginità e vedovanza , ed. Gori, Frank, Biblioteca Ambrosiana 14, 1 (Milan, 1989), 244–318; Augustine, , “Sermo CCCXLIII: De Susanna et Joseph,” Revue bénédictine, 66 (1956): 28–38; Abelard, , “Sermo XXIX: De Sancta Susanna, ad hortationem virginum,” PL 178:555–64. BL MS Additional 10596, a fifteenth-century English manuscript owned by Matilde Hoyle, a nun of Barking, contains a separate recension of the later Wycliffite version entitled “A Pistle of Holy Susanna, danyell xiii c.” For discussion of this manuscript, see Erler, Mary C., Women, Reading, and Piety in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2002), 4. For another poem about Susanna, possibly of English provenance, see Stevenson, Jane, Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 2005), 130–37. This poem was written by an “abbess Wiltrudis,” possibly either an eleventh-century German nun or a twelfth-century English nun from Wilton. For important uses of Susanna in thirteenth-century manuscript culture, see Donovan, Claire, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford (Toronto, 1991), 24, 25, 116–21. See also Fabre, Marie-Louise, Susanne ou les avatars d'un motif biblique (Paris, 2000).Google Scholar
3 See Bernard, Saint, Sermones in adnuntiatione dominica, Sermo 3, “de Susanna,” in Sancti Bernardi opera , ed. Leclercq, Jean and Rochais, Henri, Ediciones Cistercienses 5 (Rome, 1968), 13–42.Google Scholar
4 For Susanna as a type of Christ, see Ambrose, , “In Psalmum XXXVII Enarratio,” Ambrosii opera , ed. Petschenig, Michael, CSEL 64, 6 (Vienna, 1919), 136–83 at 174. Also, Catherine Brown Tkacz's informative essay, “Susanna as a Type of Christ,” Studies in Iconography 20 (1999): 101–53. For Susanna as the subject of Latin poetry, see Mozley, J. H., “Susanna and the Elders: Three Medieval Poems,” Studi Medievali, n. s. 3 (1930): 27–52; Stevenson, , Latin Poets, 130–38; Raby, F. J. E., ed., Poems of John of Hoveden, Surtees Society 154 (London, 1939), xlvii, 241.Google Scholar
5 Mozley, , “Susanna and the Elders,” 41–50.Google Scholar
6 Ward, H. L. D., ed., Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum , vol. 2 (London, 1893), 401–2, 669–71, 748; Herbert, J. A., ed., Catalogue of Romances, vol. 3 (London, 1910), 503–9. My thanks to Elaine Pordes of the British Library for her helpfulness.Google Scholar
7 Leach, Arthur Francis, ed., Memorials of Beverley Minster: The Chapter Act Book of the Collegiate Church of St. John of Beverley, A.D. 1286–1347 , Surtees Society 98 (Durham, 1898); Page, William, Victoria County History of Yorkshire, vol. 3., (London, 1913), 354. Mozeley, (“Susanna and the Elders,” [28]) accepts this identification.Google Scholar
8 On the provostship, see McDermid, Richard T. W., Beverley Minster Fasti, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series , 149 (1993 for 1990), 1–5. The Provost of Beverley received revenues from the Abbey of Melsa. For the history of Melsa, see Bond, Edward A., ed., Chronica Monasterii de Melsa a fundatione usque ad annum 1396, 3 vols. (London, 1866).Google Scholar
9 For the history of Fountains, see Dugdale, William, Monasticon Anglicanum , vol. 5 (London: 1825; repr., Westmead, 1970), 286–314; Hugh of Kirkstall, “Narratio de fundatione Fontanis Monasterii,” in Memorials of the Abbey of St. Mary of Fountains, vol. 1, ed. Walbran, John Richard, Surtees Society 42 (Durham, 1863), 1–129. For documents recording early Cistercian ideals, see Dimier, M.-Anselme, “Un Témoin tardif peu connu du conflitentre Cisterciens et Clunisiens,” in Petrus Venerabilis, 1156–1956: Studies and Texts Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of His Death , ed. Constable, Giles and Kritzeck, James, Studia Anselmiana 40 (Rome, 1956), 81–90; Knowles, David, Great Historical Enterprises: Problems in Monastic History (London, 1964), 199–224.Google Scholar
10 Page, , Victoria County History of Yorkshire , 135.Google Scholar
11 Dugdale, , Monasticon , 219.Google Scholar
12 Lumby, Joseph Rawson, ed., Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis together with the English translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown riter of the Fifteenth Century , vol. 7, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi sciptores (Rolls Series) 41 (London, 1879; repr., Nendeln, 1964), 400–401. Higden misdates the founding to 1135.Google Scholar
13 For this account, I am indebted to Hill, Bennett D., English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (Urbana, 1968), 15–64. See also Davis, R. H. C., King Stephen, 1135–1154 (Berkeley, 1967), 98–106, who notes the importance of the Cistercians for the anti-Canterbury leanings of the northern church, as well as for its antiroyalist sentiments. See also Burton, Pierre-André, “Aux origines de l'expansion anglaise de Citeaux: La fondation de Rievaulx et la conversion d'Aelred: 1128–1134,” Collectanea cisterciensia 61 (1999): 186–214, who argues that Bernard of Clairvaux persuaded Henry I to bring the Cistercians to England as part of an effort to pacify and Normanize the realm.Google Scholar
14 See Howlett, Richard, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I , vol. 1, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi sciptores (Rolls Series) 82 (1884). This contains the first four books of the Historia Rerum Anglicarum of the Augustinian William of Newburgh. For discussions of Cistercian farming, see Newman, Martha G., The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform 1098–1180 (Stanford, 1996), 70–72.Google Scholar
15 Hill, Bennett D., English Cistercian Monasteries and Their Patrons in the Twelfth Century (Urbana, 1968), 40, 62.Google Scholar
16 For Melsa and its financial problems, see Bond, , Chronica Monasterii , 289, 328, 342–43, 344–46; Wardrop, Joan, Fountains Abbey and Its Benefactors, Cistercian Studies Series 91 (Kalamazoo, 1987), 18–20.Google Scholar
17 See Cheney, C. R., “King John and the Papal Interdict,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 31 (1948): 295–317; and idem, “King John's Reaction to the Interdict on England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 31 (1949), 129–50; Holt, J. C., The Northerners: A Study in the Reign of King John (Oxford, 1961), 147, 166–70; Painter, Sidney, The Reign of King John (Baltimore, 1949), 155–202; Turner, Ralph V., The English Judiciary in the Age of Glanvill and Bracton, c. 1176–1239 (Cambridge, 1985), 158–62, and idem, Magna Carta through the Ages (London, 2003), 39–49; Warren, W. L., King John (Berkeley, 1961), 173. For a contemporary account, see the Historia Rerum Anglicarum of William of Newburgh in Howlett, Richard, ed., Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, vol. 1, Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi sciptores (Rolls Series) 82 (London, 1884), 509, 511.Google Scholar
18 Holt, , Northerners , 204.Google Scholar
19 Under John, justice was firmly tied to the king, who could behave unspeakably when opposed. Greedy and ruthless, he gouged both the clergy and the nobility, turning in 1213 to the Jews in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire as possible sources of added income (Turner, , Magna Carta , 43, 47; Holt, Northerners, 169).Google Scholar
20 See Warren, , King John , 207–16 for an analysis of the situation.Google Scholar
21 Peasants are mentioned, but it is, of course, a baronial document. See Warren, , King John , 232–40; Powicke, F. M., Stephen Langton: The Ford Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford in Hilary Term 1927 (Oxford, 1928), 102–27; and Turner, , Magna Carta. Google Scholar
22 See Stevenson, , Latin Poets , and Donovan, , The de Brailes Hours (both n. 2 above).Google Scholar
23 See Knowles, , Great Historical Enterprises (n. 9 above), who explains the issues very well.Google Scholar
24 Newman, Martha G., The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform 1098–1180 (Stanford, 1996), 16–23. For contemporary accounts describing the intensity of the Cistercian vocation, see LeClercq, Jean, “Lettres de vocation à la vie monastique,” Analecta Monastica, 3rd series, Studia Anselmiana 37 (1955): 172–89, and idem, “La collection des lettres d'Yves de Chartres,” Revue Bénédictine 56 (1945–46): 123–25; Talbot, C. H., “A Letter of Roger, Abbot of Byland,” Analecta sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 7 (1951): 218–31.Google Scholar
25 See Wilmart, A., “Les mélanges de Matthieu Préchantre de Rievaulx au début du XIIIe siècle,” Revue Bénédictine 52 (1940): 15–84; LeClercq, Jean, “Lettres de vocation,” 173–79. The manuscript is BNF MS Lat. no. 15157. Wilmart (“Les mélanges,” 15 n. 1) describes the letters of Matthew of Rievaulx as copied by one hand and corrected by two contemporary revisers, probably against an original English archetype. Wilmart notes his belief that these revisers were English, since they added a supplement (fols. 130–35), now mutilated, that contains some poems concerning Rievaulx. For these see Wilmart, , ibid., 48–51.Google Scholar
26 See Wilmart, , “Les mélanges,” 40–41, who notes that they take up fols. 89v-97. In his numbering of the items in the manuscript, the letters are nos. 63–65. Megan Cassidy-Welch (Monastic Spaces and Their Meanings. Thirteenth-Century English Cistercian Monasteries [Turnholt, 2001], 65–66) discusses Matthew of Rievaulx's letters as capturing the Cistercian language of paradisial space.Google Scholar
27 For this letter, see LeClercq, , “Lettres de vocation,” 175–77. This first letter is no. 63 in Wilmart's numbering.Google Scholar
28 The second letter is edited in Wilmart, , “Les mélanges,” 72–74.Google Scholar
29 LeClercq, , “Lettres de vocation,” 177–79.Google Scholar
30 See Wilmart, , “Les mélanges,” 69–70.Google Scholar
31 Wilmart, , ibid., 38, notes that this letter, whose addressee is unknown, was probably another monk in some sort of difficulty.Google Scholar
32 Bernard (see n. 3 above) discusses Susanna. See also Thomas the Cistercian in his commentary on the Canticle (PL 206:15–20) and Gunther the Cistercian in De oratione jejunio et eleemosyna (PL 212:97–221, at 169).Google Scholar
33 For Willetrudis, see Stevenson, , Latin Poets (n. 2 above), 130–37. Stevenson also mentions Peter Riga and Alan of Melsa. Her suggestion that Willetrudis might have been an Anglo-Norman nun from the Benedictine house of Wilton in Wiltshire is intriguing, particularly considering Jocelyn Wogan-Browne's work on the textual communities of Anglo-Norman nuns. See Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150–1300: Virginity and Its Authorizations (Oxford, 2001). Peter Riga's poem is edited by Mozley, “Susanna and the Elders” (see n. 4 above), 30–41. For a more recent edition, as well as comments on Peter Riga, see Beichner, Paul E., ed., Aurora: Petri Rigae Biblia Versificata: A Verse Commentary on the Bible, vol. 1, Publications in Medieval Studies 19 (South Bend, 1965), 360–67, 371–74. Riga, Peter, according to Beichner (notes to lines 451–646), first wrote the Historia Susanne as an independent poem before putting it into the Aurora. Aegidius of Paris, in revising the Aurora, destroyed the Historia Susanne as a debate, rearranging the parts and making additions to it so that it began in the garden and not at the trial. Mozley and Beichner print both versions of the Historia Susanne. Beichner also notes (ibid., xxix) that the Aurora was in the library at Melsa though he does not say which version. This is not surprising, considering the widespread popularity of the poem.Google Scholar
34 Mozley (“Susanna and the Elders,” 27) also notes that there are references to poems on the subject of Susanna in old library catalogues, such as those of St. Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, Peterborough Abbey Library, and the library of the Austin Friars at York. For the Austin Friars' importance to textual dissemination, see Hanna, Ralph, “Augustinian Canons and Middle English Literature,” in The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths , ed. Edwards, A. S. G., Gillespie, Vincent, and Hanna, Ralph (London, 2000), 27–42.Google Scholar
35 Stevenson, , Latin Poets (n. 2 above), 132, also talks about this, noting the ways in which Petrus's verbs implicate Susanna as a temptress. My quotations from the Historia Susanne are taken from Mozeley's edition of Aegidius's redaction, who takes this section (which belongs to Daniel's accusation of the Elders) and uses it early in the poem to describe the scene in the garden.Google Scholar
36 In the Reductorium Morale Super lotam Bibliam (Venice, 1633), 206, Pierre Bersuire likens Susanna to the soul and says that she should not have been alone (hence, without attendant virtues) in the garden.Google Scholar
37 See Donovan, , The de Brailles Hours (n. 2 above), 4–5.Google Scholar
38 Such complaints would have had a good deal of relevance for Cistercians: see Painter, , The Reign of King John (n. 17 above), 155, 158, 171, 183; Hewlett, Henry Gay, ed., Roger de Wendover Liber qui dicitur Flores historiarum ab Anno Domini MCLIV, vol. 2 (London, 1887), 47. For legal conditions, see Turner, , Magna Carta (n. 17 above), 43, 158–62; Carpenter, David, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284 (Oxford, 2003), 273; Warren, , King John (n. 17 above), 173.Google Scholar
39 See Hill, , English Cistercian Monasteries , 44–45, 76, 78; Newman, , The Boundaries of Charity (n. 14 above), 70–72, 90–91.Google Scholar
40 With the exception of nardus amomo, an eastern spice plant from which balm was extracted, which is mentioned in Canticle 4, all of the plants Alan mentions were grown in England at this time. See Crisp, Frank, Mediaeval Gardens , 2 vols. (orig. publ. 1924; repr., New York, 1966), 1:34–48; Harvey, J. H., Mediaeval Gardens (London, 1981; 2nd rev. ed., 1990), 168–80. Burton notes that, in the fourteenth century, both the prior and the abbot at Melsa had gardens, the abbot's off his private chamber. See Bond, Chronica … de Melsa 3, 242.Google Scholar
41 Peter Riga likewise employs the term “res nova” (line 149), but he uses it to describe the revolutionary force of Susanna's beauty upon the decrepitude of the elders.Google Scholar
42 Stevenson's reading (Latin Poets, 133) of Willetrudis's account of Susanna is instructive here, for Willetrudis shapes the account, probably written for nuns, so that the emphasis is upon female strength and chastity.Google Scholar
43 For a study of the documents, composition, and reception history of this narrative, see Baker, L. G. D., “The Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles: The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey 1,” Analecta Cisterciensia 25 (1969): 14–41. For the history, see Walbran, John Richard, ed., Hugh of Kirkstall: Narratio de fundatione Fontanis Monasterii in Memorials of the Abbey of St. Mary of Fountains, vol. 1, Surtees Society 42 (London, 1862), 1–129.Google Scholar
44 Walbran, , ed., Hugh of Kirkstall , 2. Cassidy-Welch (“Monastic Spaces” [n. 26 above], 66–68) also discusses the pastoral language of Cistercian foundation narratives.Google Scholar
45 See Burton, Janet E., The Monastic Order in Yorkshire (Cambridge, 1999), 217, 243; Matarasso, Pauline, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the Twelfth Century (London, 1993), xii; Mullin, F. J., A History of the Work of the Cistercians in Yorkshire (1131–1300) (Washington, DC, 1932), 38–39, 88; and Newman, , The Boundaries of Charity (n. 14 above), 23, 67–72, 90–91.Google Scholar
46 See James, M. R., ed. and trans., Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium: Courtiers' Trifles , rev. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 2002), xliv, 72–113.Google Scholar
47 Lumby, , ed., Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden (n. 12 above), 405.Google Scholar
48 Hill, , English Cistercian Monasteries (n. 13 above), 57–59, 137–40.Google Scholar
49 On justice during the reign of John, see Warren, , King John (n. 17 above), 168–73; Carpenter, , The Struggle for Mastery (n. 38 above), 273; Turner, , Magna Carta (n. 17 above), 41–43.Google Scholar
50 Wilmart, , “Les mélanges” (n. 25 above), 47, 56–57, 66–67. For a study of one way in which the political issues associated with the reign of John were refracted through a literary text, see Galloway, Andrew, “Lazamon's Gift,” Publications of the Modern Language Association 121 (2006): 717–34.Google Scholar
51 Bennett, Michael, Community, Class, and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancaster Society in the Age of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” (Cambridge, 1983); Fein, Susanna Greer, “The Early Thirteen-line Stanza: Style and Metrics Reconsidered,” Parergon 18 (2000): 97–126; Hanna, Ralph III, Pursuing History: Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts (Stanford, 1996); and idem, “Sir Thomas Berkeley and His Patronage,” Speculum 64 (1989): 878–916; Hanna, and Lawton, David, eds., The Siege of Jerusalem, EETS 320 (Oxford, 2003), Introduction; and Lawton, David, “The Diversity of Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” Leeds Studies in English 20 (1989): 143–72.Google Scholar
52 See, for example, Stenton, F. M., “The Road System of Medieval England,” Economic History Review 7 (1936): 1–21.Google Scholar
53 The term is Burton's (Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 286–87). For vernacular production, see Ralph Hanna's recent work on Yorkshire, “Yorkshire Writers,” Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, Proceedings of the British Academy 121 (2003): 91–109, along with his “Contextualizing the Siege of Jerusalem” Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992): 109–21. Hanna, of course, follows in a tradition established by Horstman, C., Yorkshire Writers, 2 vols. (London, 1895–96) and Allen, Hope E., Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit of Hampole and Materials for His Biography (New York, 1927). For Latin culture during the earlier period of Yorkshire's history, see Burton, Monastic Order, 277–96. For historical writing, see Taylor, J., Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire (York, 1961).Google Scholar
54 See Coppack, Glyn, “Sawley Abbey: An English Cistercian abbey on the Edge of ‘Stabilitas,”’ Citeaux 52 (2001): 319–36; Harland, J., ed., Historical Account of the Cistercian Abbey of Salley (London, 1853); Mikkers, E., “Un Speculum novitii inédit d'Etienne de Salley,” Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum 8 (1946): 2–68; Talbot, C. H., “Letters of Vocation by Roger de Byland,” Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis 1 (1951): 218–31. Though just over the border from Yorkshire, Sawley had extensive ties to the Yorkshire Cistercian houses, since it was a daughter house of Newminster (Burton, Monastic Order, xix). In addition, in the fourteenth century Thomas Burton, abbot of Melsa, wrote the chronicle of that abbey. Burton was affiliated with Thomas of Woodstock, who was accused of forcing Burton's election to abbot. From 1394, after the death of Queen Anne and in the same year that he founded the college of secular priests at his Essex seat of Pleshey, Thomas was granted the lordship of Holderness and thus stood in relation of the founder to the monastery of Melsa. See Bond, , Chronica Monasterii de Melsa (n. 16 above), 1: lxiii; and Goodman, Anthony, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II (Coral Gables, FL 1971), 76–77, 93. Though abbot of Swineshead in Lincolnshire, Gilbert of Holland (d. 1172), who was one of the two English continuators of St. Bernard's commentary on the Canticle, had extensive ties to the Yorkshire Cistercians, since Furness was the mother house of both Byland and Swineshead. See Braceland, Lawrence C., ed. and trans., The Works of Gilbert of Hoy-land (Kalamazoo, 1978).Google Scholar
55 Bell, David, ed., The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians (London, 1992), xxiii–iv.Google Scholar
56 Clarke, M. V., Fourteenth Century Studies , ed. Sutherland, L. S. and McKisack, M. (Oxford, 1937), 91. Hanna, , “Contextualizing The Siege of Jerusalem” 116, also cites Whalley for its potential for literary activity. See Turville-Petre, Thorlac, “The Author of the Destruction of Troy,” Medium ævum 57 (1988): 264–69, who identifies the author of the poem as a monk of Whalley.Google Scholar
57 Mullin, F. J., A History of the Work of the Cistercians in Yorkshire (n. 44 above), 91–93.Google Scholar
58 For the full list and commentary upon each volume, see Bell, , The Libraries of the Cistercians , 4–5. Sometime after 1386, John Northwood, a monk of Bordesley, wrote a miscellany (BL MS Add. 37787), fifteen of whose twenty English pieces are likewise in the Vernon manuscript. For an edition, see Baugh, Nita Scudder, A Worcestershire Miscellany compiled by John Northwood, c. 1400 (Philadelphia, 1956).Google Scholar
59 Turville-Petre (The Alliterative Revival, 44–46) has suggested that the manuscripts were copied at Bordesley. However, see Doyle, A. I. in The Vernon Manuscript: A Facsimile of Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. Poet.a.l , with an introduction by Doyle, A. I. (Cambridge, 1987), esp. 13–16. For information about Stoneleigh Abbey, see Dugdale, Monasticon (n. 9 above), 443–45. Stoneleigh was first founded in 1154 at Radmore in Staffordshire, and the monks of Bordesley helped to instruct the new monks in the Cistercian discipline. As Dugdale (ibid., 443) notes, “there grew great friendship betwixt these two monasteries….” Twelve years later, the monastery moved to Stoneleigh.Google Scholar
60 The suggestion about dating belongs to Ralph Hanna; see Staley, Lynn, Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II (University Park, PA, 2005), 340 n. 3.Google Scholar
61 Pearsall, Derek (“The Alliterative Revival: Origins and Social Backgrounds,” in Middle English Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background , ed. Lawton, David [Cambridge, 1982], 34–53) has suggested that we might look to the monasteries themselves for the alliterative poets, whose poems might have been intended as entertainment for visiting patrons. Harland (Historical Account [n. 53 above]) has made a similar suggestion for Sawley Abbey.Google Scholar
62 For a map of Cistercian monasteries in England in the twelfth century, see Ferguson, Peter, Architecture of Solitude: Cistercian Abbeys in Twelfth-Century England (Princeton, 1984), plate 1; see plate 2 for the filiations of these monasteries.Google Scholar
63 Citations from A Pistel of Susan refer to the edition edited by Turville-Petre, Thorlac in Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 1989), 120–39, and will be cited by line number in the text. There are two other editions of the poem, both of which contain excellent notes and commentary: Susannah: An Alliterative Poem of the Fourteenth Century , ed. Miskimin, Alice (New Haven, 1969); The Pistel of Swete Susan, in Heroic Women from the Old Testament in Middle English Verse , ed. Peck, Russell A., TEAMS (Kalamazoo, 1991), 73–108.Google Scholar
64 Turville-Petre, , Alliterative Poetry, 126 nn. 66–117. See also Peck, , Heroic Women , Introduction, 73–78.Google Scholar
65 See Tractatus … de Susanna , line 166. With the exception of cinnamon, which is mentioned in the Canticle, all of the plants were grown in England at this time. See n. 40 above.Google Scholar
66 Tractatus … de Susanna, line 213. In the Pistel of Susan , the poet has the judges repeat the word “lorere” (laurel) twice more (lines 136, 143), probably to have them incriminate themselves as persecutors of the innocent, as well as to look forward to Daniel's questioning about the type of tree later in the poem.Google Scholar
67 In reference to this line, Turville-Petre, , Alliterative Poetry , 139, notes that such punishment before execution was reserved for “particularly heinous crimes.” Google Scholar
68 Buc, Philippe, “The Book of Kings: Nicholas of Lyra's Mirror of Princes,” in Krey, Philip D. and Smith, Lesley, eds., Nicholas of Lyra: the Senses of Scripture , Studies in the History of Christian Thought 90 (Boston, 2000), 83–110 at 89.Google Scholar
69 de Lyra, Nicolaus, Postilla super totam Bihliam , vol. 2 (Strasburg, 1492; repr., Frankfurt, 1971), on Daniel 13.Google Scholar
70 For these poems, see The Tale of Gamelyn in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales , ed. Knight, Stephen and Ohlgren, Thomas, TEAMS (Kalamazoo, 1997), 184–226; Athelston, in Four Romances of England , ed. Herzman, Ronald B., Drake, Graham, and Salisbury, Eve, TEAMS (Kalamazoo, 1999), 341–84.Google Scholar
71 I am extrapolating here from Caroline Barron, who speaks of the London Guildhall and London city privileges. See her London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004), 37. Royal justices could also sit in urban guildhalls, but there is no reference in A Pistel of Susan to royal justices, which would be Babylonian; rather, all the characters are the Jewish exiles. Barron also notes the struggle in the city of London regarding where royal justices shall sit.Google Scholar
72 Benson, Larry D., gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer , 3rd ed. (Boston, 1987), lines 277–78; 285–86. The Physician pulls back from the warning about false judges to be found in the account of Virginius in the Romance of the Rose, Chaucer's probable source for this tale. See Dahlberg, Charles, trans., Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, (Princeton, 1971), lines 5555–692. If Chaucer also knew Livy's history, he would have found there an even greater emphasis upon justice. For both texts in the original, see “The Physician's Tale” in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , ed. Bryan, W. F. and Dempster, Germaine (Chicago, 1941), 398–408.Google Scholar
73 Putnam, Bertha Haven, “The Transformation of the Keepers of the Peace into the Justices of the Peace, 1327–1380,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th series, 12 (1929): 19–48, esp. 45–48; Ormrod, W. M., The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–1377 (New Haven, 1990), 23, 32, 152.Google Scholar
74 Kaeuper, Richard W., War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), 181–82, 375. Kaeuper pays particular attention to the Robin Hood tales.Google Scholar
75 See Green, Richard Firth, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1998), 64, 220, 221; Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, vol. 3 (Manchester, 1937), 259–64.Google Scholar
76 He uses covetousness again in line 306. Post, J. B. (“Ravishment of Women and the Statutes of Westminster,” in Legal Records and the Historian , ed. Baker, J. H. [London, 1978], 150–60) notes the materialistic concerns embedded in the rape law of the late fourteenth century. For a survey of the laws of rape as they apply to Chaucer, see Cannon, Christopher, “Raptus in the Chaumpaigne Release and a Newly Discovered Document Concerning the Life of Geoffrey Chaucer,” Speculum 68 (1993): 74–94.Google Scholar
77 See Middle English Dictionary , ed. Kurath, Hans, assoc. ed. Kuhn, Sherman M., (Ann Arbor, 1952–2001), s. v. “pleint.” Google Scholar
78 Lockwood, Shelley, ed., Sir John Fortescue, On the Laws and Governance of England (Cambridge, 1997), 30.Google Scholar
79 New York, Pierpont Morgan MS 818 (Ingilby MS), ca. 1425–75. According to the Pierpont Morgan notes, this manuscript is possibly from Yorkshire and possibly associated with the Cistercian abbey of Fountains. However as Ralph Hanna noted in a private communication, it is linked with Fountains because it was long owned by the Ingilbys of Ripley, who may have pillaged Fountains at the Dissolution. It contains A Pistel of Susan, Rolle's Form of Living, and the earliest known version of the A-text of Piers Plowman. The other two manuscripts are: BL Cotton Caligula A.ii, part 1 (ca. 1440–60). This manuscript contains a number of romances, as well as the Siege of Jerusalem and moral and religious works. For a description of this manuscript, in which A Pistel of Susan appears in a separate booklet at the head, see Hanna, Ralph and Lawton, David, eds., The Siege of Jerusalem EETS, 320 (Oxford, 2003), xxiv-xxvi. And Huntington HM 114, (ca. 1425–50), which contains a text of Piers Plowman, but also of Mandeville's Travels, Three Kings of Cologne, and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. See Dutschke, C. W. et al., Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library (San Marino, CA, 1989), 150–52.Google Scholar
80 Peck, , Pistel of Swete Susan (n. 62 above), 78, quotes Doyle's comments from his Introduction to the Vernon Facsimile (The Vernon Manuscript [n. 58 above], 15–16), to which I refer. See also my remarks in Languages of Power (n. 59 above), 340–45.Google Scholar
81 The history of the Bohun family is inevitably a history of English books and book-making. See, for example, Sandler, Lucy Freeman, The Lichtenthal Psalter and the Manuscript Patronage of the Bohun Family (London, 2004). Joan and her husband Humphrey were important patrons of many religious foundations, especially Walden Abbey in Essex. Joan also helped found a chantry in the Cistercian abbey of Coggeshall in Essex (see Dugdale, , Monasticon [n. 9 above], 451), and her son-in-law, Thomas of Woodstock, a notorious book collector himself, was deeply involved with Melsa in Yorkshire. For books associated with both, see Cavanaugh, Sheila H., “A Study of Books Privately Owned in England, 1300–1450,” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1980.Google Scholar
82 See Saul, Nigel, Richard II (New Haven, 1997), 373–75.Google Scholar
83 Goodman, Anthony, “The Countess and the Rebels: Essex and a Crisis in English Society,” Essex Archaeology and History: The Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society 2 (1972): 274. On forfeiture, see Ross, C. D., “Forfeiture for Treason in the Reign of Richard II,” English Historical Review 71 (1956): 560–75.Google Scholar
84 Jeffrey, David Lyle (“False Witness and the Just Use of Evidence in the Wycliffite Pistel of Swete Susan,” in The Judgment of Susanna: Authority and Witness , ed. Spol-sky, Ellen [Atlanta, 1996], 57–71) has argued that A Pistel should be situated “in the context of Wycliffite concerns about oppression by false witnesses” (69). His argument is rich and informative, but the manuscripts in which the poem appears do not warrant the identification. But see also his discussion of later Wycliffite allusions to Susanna.Google Scholar
85 In Two Wycliffite Texts , ed. Hudson, Anne, EETS 301 (Oxford, 1993), 24–93 at 35. See Jeffrey, , “False Witness,” 66–67 for Wyclif's references to her as an example of injustice.Google Scholar
86 For editions of the sermon, see Knight, Ione Kemp, Wimbledon's Sermon: “Redde Rationem Villicationis Tue”: A Middle English Sermon of the Fourteenth Century (Pitts burgh, 1967); and Owen, Nancy H., “Thomas Wimbledon's Sermon: ‘Redde racionem villicacionis tue,”’ Mediaeval Studies 28 (1966): 176–97. This sermon is extant in fifteen manuscripts; it was also printed eighteen times between 1550 and 1635 and carried over into Foxe's Acts and Monuments. For detailed manuscript information, see Knight's, I. K. introduction (Wimbledon's Sermon).Google Scholar
87 Fisher, John, A Spiritual consolation written … to hys sister Elizabeth (London, 1578); Ridley, Nicholas, An Account of a Disputation at Oxford, anno dom. 1554, with A Treatise of the Blessed Sacrament (London, 1685); and Raleigh, Walter Sir, The Arraignment and Conviction of Sr. Walter Rawleigh … on 17 November 1603 (London, 1648).Google Scholar
88 Garter, Thomas, The commody of the Moste Virtuous and Godlye Susanna (London, 1578); Roche, Robert, Eustathia, or the Constancie of Susanna (London, 1599); Aylett, Robert, Susanna: or, the Arraignment of the Two Vniust Elders (London, 1622).Google Scholar
