In a recent issue of Traditio, Sister M. Teresa Brady demonstrates clearly that the late fourteenth-century devotional work The Pore Caitif, which she is confident is wholly orthodox, has made extensive use of some of the material produced in the well-organized and well-financed centers of Lollardy which Anne Hudson has shown to have been active at the time. Her demonstration starts with, and is clearest for, the Glossed Gospels, a series of commentaries on the four Gospels consisting entirely of translations from the works of standard authorities, mostly patristic, and based on the Catena Aurea, but including also quotations from authors more nearly contemporary, such as Grosseteste, John of Abbeville, FitzRalph, and William Peraldus. In establishing so clearly the use of the Glossed Gospels (hereafter GG) Sister Teresa claims justly to have found the first stone in the metaphorical arch which I once suggested should link Bible translation and tract production, though her tracts are orthodox, not the Lollard ones the metaphor envisaged.
