“We must abyde and bere more and greater payne, prysonment, flockes, fethers, chenes, flayles, fyre, the racking, the swerde, and all kyndes and maner of tourmentes, yee and also the losse of lyfe, when iuste cause requireth…” (108). Richard Whitford's poignant advice in his 1541 printing of The Boke of Pacience evokes the suffering experienced by the inhabitants of his house Syon Abbey and other Catholics at the hands of Henrician reformers, and the fortitude that enabled the Birgittine community to survive for centuries more. Brandon Alakas, with Stephanie Morley as editorial assistant, have made available for the first time in a modern edition this fascinating devotional anthology by Whitford, Dyuers Holy Intrucyons and Teachynges Very Necessary for the Helth of Mannes Soule, with The Boke of Pacience as the first of four texts. This publication comes as a major boon for research on Syon Abbey, the only English house of the Birgittine Order, as well as for the study of the Reformation and of late medieval English religious literature. As the opening quote attests, Dyuers Holy Instrucyons offers fresh, compelling insight into the Catholic piety and monastic devotion that weathered the political drama of the period up to and through the Dissolution.
The volume's thorough and well-researched Introduction offers an overview starting with Whitford's life; the Syon community and its relationship to lay piety and vernacular devotional literature; monasticism and the reformation; brief notes on the four extant copies of Dyuers Holy Instrucyons; a discussion of William Middleton, printer; analysis of the language of the text; and lastly, editorial procedures for the edition itself. Educated at Cambridge and steeped in the humanist New Learning, Richard Whitford became one of the priest-brothers at Syon in 1511 and spent the next thirty years actively providing his Birgittine sisters and a wider lay community with new reading material. Whitford's original compositions and translations should be seen as part of Syon's large-scale publishing and printing program, Alakas argues, aligning with other scholars who have shed light on Syon's role in fifteenth-century print culture. Other major texts for which Whitford became well-known include A Werke for Householders (1530–1537) and The Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection (1532), “noteworthy for its vocal opposition to Lutheran critiques of religious life and the effect of evangelical doctrines on royal policy” (7). But it was only Dyuers Holy Instrucyons that was printed in the wake of the grisly 1535 martyrdom of Richard Reynolds, executed for refusing to sign the Oath of Supremacy. This “losse of lyfe” rocked the abbey but did not shake their dedication to the Birgittine vocation. Whitford, among other Syon brothers and sisters, remained an “obstinate opponent to Henry's reform of the English Church until Syon's expulsion in 1539” (9). He continued to practice an adapted monastic life in a household community until his death in 1546.
The constituent parts of Dyuers Holy Instrucyons were composed over about twenty years before being collected by Whitford and printed by William Middleton in 1541. Two prefaces and The Boke of Pacience are original compositions. The other three works are loosely based on translations of Latin works: A Worke of Dyuers Impediments and Lettes of Perfection, An Instruction to auoyde and eschewe vyces and folowe good maners or the Consilia of Isidore of Seville, and Of Detraction: Chrisostomus homelia tercia or the Homilis on the Statues by John Chrysostom. Together their “appeals to abandon worldly concerns and anxieties and to accept the various deprivations life brings” (16) links them together, and no doubt resonated with the difficulties of pursuing monastic life after being cast out of their monastic home. Like many of the works ostensibly addressed to the sisters at Syon, Whitford's anthology expected—and reached—a broader audience: “he is clearly envisioning not only male and female readers but also a mixed lay and religious audience to whom guidance is phrased in a less severe and less restrictive manner” (29). These “pious readers,” for whom Syon's texts had “possessed a great deal of cachet” in its heyday, now looked to its outcast former inhabitants for succor under persecution. Dyuers Holy Instrucyons would have provided precisely that comfort.
Whitford did not show fear in printing such a Catholic book as late as 1541. The first preface emphasizes his named authorship, warning against anonymous texts that could be heretical, “for so the heretykes do vse to sende for the theyr poison amonge the people, couered with suger” (46). Named authorship contrasts with earlier practices of anonymity among the Birgittines and especially Carthusians, a fascinating avenue for further research. The texts themselves provide many similarly interesting passages that deserve analysis in terms of Syon's literary history, late-medieval devotional literature in general, and Catholic culture during the Reformation. For instance, compare the discussion of reading in Consilia with the much-studied relevant sentiments in the Myroure of Oure Lady: “Lection, and redynge, or herynge of good holy bokes and auctorysed works is a good occupacion. Study and lerning, and also techyng is a good occupacion, meditacion of holy scripture is a holy ocupacion . . . By redynge and lernynge, thy wytte and vnderstandynge shall increase” (143).
Whitford's extensive sidenotes to his textual authorities are helpfully elucidated in the “Notes on the Text.” Alakas also includes a glossary of obscure English vocabulary, which “aims primarily to assist the undergraduate and generalist reader by including words or forms that might be confusing on account of spelling or other ambiguity” (191). This points to the utility of the volume. The editorial procedures have produced a text equally useful to both scholars and students. Modern punctuation, capitalization, and word division complement the original spelling. The edition could be quite useful in an upper undergraduate or graduate course on Middle English literature, as a way of covering important sixteenth-century issues, or on a religious studies syllabus looking to represent Catholic Reformation piety.
Alakas has provided scholars with a top-notch edition that will hopefully spark much-needed work on Whitford and his neglected texts. Though Whitford might encourage the editor to “neuer wey nor measure yourselfe by any other mans tonge or sayng, but by your owne mynde and conscience” (148), this reviewer, and surely many researchers to come, applauds the publication of this volume.
