Michael Sargent as textual critic

In their introduction to Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson note that there has historically been a divide, albeit an artificial one, between the literary critic and the textual editor. They suggest, though, that while critics can redirect or circumvent a problem that the text proposes, editors never can – they must confront head on the problems of the text and find a way to resolve or answer those problems in their product. The work of the critic is largely dependent on the work of the editor, but editorial work can be viewed as ‘drudgery’ and somehow less innovative than literary criticism. Of course, in medieval studies many people are both editors and critics, but this labour can still be seen as distinct, their work categorically divided. In these traditional senses, Michael Sargent is both editor and critic. However, he has from the start resisted this taxonomy and shown that the work of the editor is critical, the work of the critic, editorial.

This combination can be seen throughout Michael's career, but perhaps most clearly at its start – with his dissertation ‘James Grenehalgh as Textual Critic’, the formative article, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, and in his two major critical editions, Nicholas Love's The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ and, most recently, Walter Hilton's second book of The Scale of Perfection. There are many notable articles and contributions among Michael's works, but to list and discuss them all would constitute an entire volume in itself (all of his published works can be seen at the end of this volume). These works serve as signposts in his evolution as an editor and critic, pointing to the ways in which he has expanded and influenced the field of medieval devotional and editorial studies.

Michael's 1976 essay for the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, literally remapped the context for English medieval devotional texts and their transmission. It is one of his most cited essays with good reason, as it lays out the ways in which the Carthusian order deliberately translated and disseminated medieval devotional literature.

Bridget's vision, Syon Abbey and double monasteries in England

In this essay I will look at how Syon Abbey served as a site of religious questions and problems concerning orthodoxy and gender in medieval England and examine the ways in which the abbey's legislative texts reinforced ambiguous gender binaries and representations within the order's double structure. At the centre of these conflicts, anxieties and disputes stood the body of the nun. Her description, along with the limits of her agency and the transgressions she has the potential to commit are the issues to which the abbey's texts returned. Within the double order, the nuns’ bodies are brought into relief against the backdrop of the men; the presence of the brothers focuses the gaze on the sexualized bodies of the nuns in ways that a standard female-only convent would not permit. The Syon ‘Additions’, a set of legislative supplements to the general Birgittine rule, offer a particular insight into the way that the order in England embraced and struggled with the double monastic structure. The body of the Syon nun lay at the core of this struggle.

Bridget did not plan for an order of nuns in the usual way – founding a house, following an established rule, finding Church and state support. Instead, Bridget had a revelation of what her order and rule would look like, and it was unlike other established orders. Bridget's vision decreed a house of sixty nuns, with a delineated group of brothers to assist them: thirteen priests, four deacons and eight lay brothers. This was one of Bridget's most notable departures from other houses, even those with a double monastic structure. Here, Bridget envisioned brothers living and serving under the abbess, the ultimate authority of the house, and she saw the Birgittine brothers (technically not monks) as supporting what was, at its core, a house for women. The brothers, like the sisters, vowed to follow her rule, which she conceived in the visions; however, it did not officially become codified the way she imagined and was interpolated into the Augustinian rule when ultimately implemented. In 1346 the mother house was founded by Bridget in Vadstena, Sweden. Bridget conceived that only the sisters would elect the abbess, who would also lead the brothers.