The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises | Page 6

forgetting, as far forth as thou mayst by grace, and as thy
frailty will suffer; evermore meeking thee to prayer and to counsel,
patiently abiding the will of our Lord, unto the time that thy mind be
ravished above itself, to be fed with the fair food of angels in the
beholding of God and ghostly things; so that it be fulfilled in thee that
is written in the psalm: Ibi Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu;
that is: 'There is Benjamin, the young child, in ravishing of mind."'[8]
The text printed by Pepwell differs slightly from that of the
manuscripts, of which a large number have been preserved. Among
others, it is found in the Arundel MS. 286, and the Harleian MSS. 674,
1022, and 2373. It has been published from the Harl. MS. 1022 by
Professor C. Horstman, who observes that "it is very old, and certainly
prior to Walter Hilton."[9] It is evidently by one of the followers of
Richard Rolle, dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century.
External and internal evidence seems to point to its being the work of
the anonymous author of the Divine Cloud of Unknowing.
This is not the place to tell again the wonderful story of St. Catherine of
Siena (1347-1380), one of the noblest and most truly heroic women
that the world has ever seen. Her life and manifold activities only
touched England indirectly. The famous English captain of mercenaries,
Sir John Hawkwood, was among the men of the world who, at least for
a while, were won to nobler ideals by her letters and exhortations. Two
of her principal disciples, Giovanni Tantucci and William Flete, both
Augustinian hermits, were graduates of Cambridge; the latter, an
Englishman by birth, was appointed by her on her deathbed to preside
over the continuance of her work in her native city, and a vision of his,
concerning the legitimacy of the claims of Urban the Sixth to the papal
throne, was brought forward as one of the arguments that induced
England, on the outbreak of the Great Schism in the Church (1378), to
adhere to the Roman obedience for which Catherine was battling to the
death. A letter which she herself addressed on the same subject to King
Richard the Second has not been preserved.
About 1493, Wynkyn de Worde printed The Lyf of saint Katherin of
Senis the blessid virgin, edited by Caxton; which is a free translation,
by an anonymous Dominican, with many omissions and the addition of
certain reflections, of the Legenda, the great Latin biography of St.
Catherine by her third confessor, Friar Raymond of Capua, the famous

master-general and reformer of the order of St. Dominic (d. 1399). He
followed this up, in 1519, by an English rendering by Brother Dane
James of the Saint's mystical treatise the Dialogo: "Here begynneth the
Orcharde of Syon; in the whiche is conteyned the reuelacyons of seynt
Katheryne of Sene, with ghostly fruytes and precyous plantes for the
helthe of mannes soule."[10] This was not translated from St.
Catherine's own vernacular, but from Friar Raymond's Latin version of
the latter, first printed at Brescia in 1496. From the first of these two
works, the Lyf, are selected the passages--the Divers Doctrines devout
and fruitful--which Pepwell here presents to us; but it seems probable
that he was not borrowing directly from Caxton, as an almost verbally
identical selection, with an identical title, is found in the British
Museum, MS. Reg. 17 D.V., where it follows the Divine Cloud of
Unknowing.
Margery Kempe is a much more mysterious personage. She has come
down to us only in a tiny quarto of eight pages printed by Wynkyn de
Worde:--
"Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our
lorde Jhesu cryste, or taken out of the boke of Margerie kempe of
Lynn."
And at the end:--
"Here endeth a shorte treatyse called Margerie kempe de Lynn.
Enprynted in Fletestrete by Wynkyn de worde."
The only known copy is preserved in the University of Cambridge. It is
undated, but appears to have been printed in 1501.[11] With a few
insignificant variations, it is the same as was printed twenty years later
by Pepwell, who merely inserts a few words like "Our Lord Jesus said
unto her," or "she said," and adds that she was a devout ancress. Tanner,
not very accurately, writes: "This book contains various discourses of
Christ (as it is pretended) to certain holy women; and, written in the
style of modern Quietists and Quakers, speaks of the inner love of God,
of perfection, et cetera."[12] No manuscript of the work is known to
exist, and absolutely no traces can be discovered of the "Book of
Margery Kempe," out of which it is implied by the Printer that these
beautiful thoughts and