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Exemplary Intentions Two English Dominican Hagiographers in the Thirteenth Century and the Preaching through exempla
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The exemplum is a short edifying tale that uses a historical person's positive or negative character traits to make a moral point. Its homiletic suitability ensured the genre's widespread use throughout premodern Europe. Not only were exempla effective preaching instruments on which a travelling friar could rely, but they also were extremely elastic in their application. A closer look at two late thirteenth-century English texts, Ralph Bocking's Latin Life of St Richard of Chichester (Vita sancti Ricardi) and the Life of St Dominic in the anonymous South English Legendary, a Middle English cycle of saints' lives, will explore two original ways in which mendicant hagiographers attempt to conceal and yet betray their intentions through their choice of hagiographic exempla. The first, I argue, petitions the patron, Isabella of Arundel, for a gift to the Order of Preachers, whereas the second text shows evidence of having been composed by a Dominican friar.
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- Copyright © The author 2008. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2008
References
1 ‘Tunc ille prostratus ad terram dixit: “Domina, doce me te laudare et amare et honorare.” Cumque se in lacrimis funderet, respondit: “Vade ad fratres, et ipsi te docebunt.” Et cum ipse diceret: “Domina, multorum ordinum sunt fratres; ad quos eorum me mittis?” ait: “Vade ad fratres predicatores, quia ipsi sunt fratres mei, et ipsi te docebunt.”’ Gerard de Frachet, Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. B.M.Reichert, Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica, 1 (1886), 42. The translation is from Kleinberg, Aviad, Prophets in Their Own Country (Chicago, 1992), p. 79Google Scholar.
2 Although by no means an exclusively mendicant medium, the exemplum or emblematic anecdote was popularised by the travelling friars: Bennet, R.F., The Early Dominicans (Cambridge, 1937), pp. 76–77 and 90–91Google Scholar. L'Exemplum, by Bremond, C., Goff, J. Le, and Schmitt, J.C. (Tournhout, 1982)Google Scholar forms together with Prêcher d'exemples – Récits de prédicateurs du Moyen Age présentés par J.C. Schmitt (Paris, 1985)Google Scholar one of the most recent discussions of exempla in the preaching tradition of the Middle Ages. Mosher, J.A., The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Didactic Literature of England (New York, 1911)Google Scholar remains the pioneering study of exempla in medieval England.
3 Kleinberg, A., Prophets in Their Own Country (Chicago, 1992), pp. 79–80Google Scholar.
4 Peter of Dacia, De gratia naturam ditante sive de virtutibus Christinae stumbelensis, ed. Asztalos, M. (Stockholm, 1982)Google Scholar.
5 Stephan of Bourbon, Anecdotes, historiques, légendes et apologues, ed. Marche, A. Lecoy de la (Paris, 1877)Google Scholar. Quoted from Goodich, M., Vita perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century, Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, 25 (Stuttgart, 1982), p. 7, n. 18Google Scholar.
6 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, VI, ll. 435–38, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, L.D. (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar.
7 Bennet, R.F., The Early Dominicans (Cambridge, 1937), p. 91Google Scholar. On the question of the origin of fairy-tales, Bennet lists Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire française au moyen âge, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1885)Google Scholar and G.R., Owst, Preaching in Medieval England, 1350–1400 (Cambridge, 1926)Google Scholar and Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933)Google Scholar.
8 It has been edited and translated together with an array of sources for the saint's life by David Jones in Saint Richard of Chichester: The Sources for his Life, Sussex Record Society, vol. 79 (Lewes, 1995). All quotations from Ralph's Vita Sancti Ricardi are taken from Jones’ edition.
9 Although not as prolific as their Franciscan colleagues, the Friars Preachers have produced many works and collections of hagiography in their first century of existence, most notably Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda aurea. Gerard de Frachet's Vitae Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum is also a substantial anthology of Lives, albeit, as the title betrays, it limits itself to Dominicans.
10 Richard was canonised in 1262. On the dating of Ralph's Life see Jones, p. 8.
11 ‘[…] vite sanctorum, que penes vos copiose habentur in unum […]’, David Jones, p. 84. Jones lists the following sources for Isabella's interest in hagiography: Lawrence, C.H., St Edmund of Abingdon: a Study in Hagiography and History (Oxford, 1960), pp. 74–6Google Scholar and James, M.R., Jacob, E.F., and Lowe, W.R.L., eds., Illustrations to the Life of St Alban in Trinity College, Dublin, MS E.i.40 (Oxford, 1924)Google Scholar.
12 ‘Quid, inquam, faciet nisi quod vos Dei inspiratione a tempore viduitatis, facere concepistis, ad turturis similitudinem iteratam copulam maritalem respuendo, non voti necessitate set casti propositi sola voluntate […]’, p. 83. The translation is from Jones, p. 161.
13 Most exempla are short anecdotes suited for sermons, but brevity is not a sine qua non as Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale proves.
14 ‘Ad interiorem ergo faciem exor[n]andam, accipite venerabilis Ricardi vitam egregiam, quam speculi vice mentis vestre oculis apponite et, exemplo eius, quod fedum et sordidum est deponite et morum ornatu quicquid necesse est componite […]’, p. 84. Translation, p. 162.
15 Jones, pp. 84–5.
16 The fascinating topic of the imperfect or sinning saint is dealt with at length in Dorn, E., Der sündige Heilige in der Legende des Mittelalters (Munich, 1967)Google Scholar.
17 ‘Et ut vitae consilia in se artius custodiret et aliis efficatius suaderet, artioris vite semitam servare disponens, illi excellenti Ordini Fratrum Predicatorum […]’, p. 86. Translation, p. 164.
18 Jones, p. 99.
19 ‘O serve Christi Ricarde, statum et vitam recole quam junior quondam votis et voto tenere proposuisti et, nisi Deus aliter ordinasset, quantum in te fuit asumere voluisti et gaude nichillominus quia iam tenere meruisti’, p. 99. Translation, p. 176.
20 ‘Quem, inquis, statum vel quam vitam dicis? Vitam dico Fratrum Predicatorum, que est absque proprio in paupertate Christum predicare, animarum salutem procurare et, in Domini messe gratis de sua gratia confidentes, alacriter laborare’, p. 99. Translation, p. 176.
21 Jones, p. 101.
22 Jones, p. 101.
23 Jones, p. 83.
24 Jones, p. 8.
25 Jones prints Richard's will on pp. 66–70.
26 Beatrice D. Brown's theory of mendicant authorship (in Brown, B.D., The Southern Passion, EETS o.s. 167 (London, 1927)Google Scholar, p. cv) has been generally accepted and the ensuing discussion has centered on determining whether the author was a Dominican or a Franciscan friar. D'Evelyn, Charlotte and Mill, Anna J., eds., The South English Legendary, vol. 3, EETS o.s. 244 (London, 1959), pp. 16–7Google Scholar, cautiously suggest a Dominican author on the grounds of the later inclusion of Peter the Dominican, and Hinnebusch, W.A., The Early English Friars Preachers (Rome, 1951)Google Scholar notes ‘that it is inconceiveable that a Franciscan should have praised St. Dominic in warmer tones than St. Francis’, p. 311. Theodor Wolpers, Die englische Heiligengeschichte des Mittelalters (Tübingen, 1964) argues that while the clear structure of the SEL hints at Dominican design, the emphasis on humilitas points to the use by the Friars Minor (pp. 244–46). Wolpers proposes the involvement of both orders, at least in the later stages of the text's development: ‘Für das Gesamtunternehmen jedoch scheint es das Wahrscheinlichste, daß an ihm – wenigstens in späterer Zeit – beide Orden gemeinsam beteiligt gewesen sind’, p. 246. Recently, the theory of Franciscan authorship has resurfaced in Karen Bjelland's essay ‘Franciscan versus Dominican Responses to the Knight as a Societal Model in the Case of the South English Legendary’, in Franciscan Studies, 48:24 (1988), 11–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Wolpers, Die englische Heiligenlegende des Mittelalters, pp. 240–1.
28 Vernacular calendars of Saints’ Lives for homiletic purposes date back in England to at least the tenth-century Blickling Homilies, a collection of nineteen partly fragmentary pieces to fit the sanctorale. The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, 3 vols, EETS o.s. 58, 63, 73 (London, 1874, 1876, 1880).
29 Becket was the most popular English saint of the Middle Ages, and a number of his Lives were in circulation. It was impossible to avoid detailed treatment of this paradigmatic political saint in the SEL.
30 Incidents and miracles from Saints’ Lives could also be instrumentalised as exempla as an anonymous thirteenth-century collection of exempla by a Cambridge Dominican shows. His exempla#18 (p. 119) and #218 (p. 144), for instance, tell of St Edmund of Canterbury. ‘A Cambridge Dominican Collector of Exempla in the Thirteenth Century’, ed. Stephen L. Forte OP, in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 28 (1958), 115–48.
31 Wolpers notes the emphatic references to preaching in the Life of Peter the Dominican and observes that even St Benedict is portrayed as a preacher, p. 239.
32 C. Horstmann, The Early South English Legendary, EETS o.s. 87 (London, 1887), p. 177, #28, ll.1–6.
33 Charlotte D'Evelyn and Anne J. Mill, eds., The South English Legendary, vol. 3, EETS o.s. 244 (London, 1959), p. 3, 11.66–8.
34 Harrison, Dick, Medieval Space – The Extent of Microspatial Knowledge in Western Europe During the Middle Ages, Lund Studies in International History, 34 (Lund, 1996)Google Scholar, passim, defines microspatial knowledge as the sum of all information available about the known world.
35 Horstmann, p. 220, #36, l.16. The same phrase recurs in the account of St Michael, p. 303, #45, l.133.
36 Horstmann, p. 441, #63, ll.359–62.
37 Horstmann, p. 441, #63, ll.353–4.
38 Cf. n. 26.
39 W.F. Manning argues convincingly that the Life of Dominic is based on the Legenda aurea and adds that it has been composed by a Dominican. Manning, W.F., ‘The Middle English Verse Life of St. Dominic. Date and Source’, Speculum 31 (1956), 82–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
40 This quintessentially Dominican belief is also found in Ralph's Life of Richard, cf. n. 20.
41 Horstmann, p. 280, #41, ll.100–1.
42 Horstmann, p. 278, #41, ll.17–8.
43 Horstmann, p. 281, #41, ll.133–4.
44 Horstmann, p. 282, #41, l.139.1