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  • Print publication year: 2008
  • Online publication date: November 2008

14 - Spiritual writings and religious instruction

from Readership, libraries, texts and contexts
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Summary
Until around 1300, Latin texts would be read almost exclusively by male clerics and vernacular texts by the laity of both sexes and by women religious. Anglo-Norman texts might be aimed at a slightly higher social class than those in Middle English. One of the most widely owned, and best documented, Latin works of religious instruction was William of Pagula's Oculus sacerdotis. English was well established as a language of religious discourse by the mid-fourteenth century. The most popular poem and the most widely disseminated work of religious instruction written in Middle English judging by the 115 known manuscripts, was the anonymous Pricke of conscience. Early Rolle manuscripts belonged to various monastic orders, in England and on the Continent, Carthusians, Augustinian canons, Bridgettines, York Benedictines; a cathedral; an individual priest, but not apparently to mendicants. Scholars have speculated for years about the Vernon Manuscript. Vernon is more than a monument to the spread of literacy, and of English.

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The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain
  • Online ISBN: 9781139054201
  • Book DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521782180
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