| Popis: |
����� ��� Whatever happened to the affect of the Anglo-Saxons? Why were their modes of spirituality omitted from the grand narratives of devotion and mysticism in the Middle Ages? Given the immense body of Latin evidence that attests to the devotional traditions of the Anglo-Saxons, to say nothing of the vernacular, how are we to explain the failure of scholars to integrate early and late medieval piety? Central terms of the later tradition, including “affectivity,” “meditation,” and “mysticism,” seem out of place when used in conjunction with the earlier evidence. But should this be the case? This essay and the two that follow ask questions about the continuity of English spiritual traditions and call attention to the importance of Anglo-Saxon evidence in those traditions. Studies of medieval spirituality routinely isolate later from earlier traditions. Joan Nuth's God's Lovers in an Age of Anxiety: The Medieval English Mystics, includes Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the Cloud-author, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe. According to Nuth, “a significant change” took place about 1200 when the vernacular came to be used in spiritual writing, especially in writing by women. 1 Nuth seems to be reflecting R. M. Wilson's rather different claim, made in 1956, that mystics who were ignorant of Latin were silent before vernacular became widespread. 2 The question relevant both to Wilson's and to Nuth's argument is when the vernacular became widespread, and in England it was not 1200. Not surprisingly, Nuth includes no authors before the fourteenth century in her study and considers no English figure before 1200 a mystic. Another example is Cultures of Piety, an excellent anthology edited by Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas H. Bestul. They identify the twelfth century as a period of “marked growth” in mystical writing—reasonably enough—and acknowledge the role of collections of prayers starting already in the eighth century. 3 The aim |
