WHILE MANY IMPORTANT theological texts in the Middle Ages were translated into English, Latin remained the language of devotional authority. Translators in prologues and epilogues were careful to apologize for their inability to get the move from Latin to English just right, or were quick to point out that they had made sure to drop the heavily theological content so that the less lettered could understand what they were about to read. The unknown “Englisshe compyloure” (English compiler) of the late Middle English collection of women's saints’ lives in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 114 does just this, writing that he hopes those who read it “forgif hym alle defautes that he hath made in compilynge […] this Englysche so as is oute of Latyne” (forgive him all errors that he has made in compiling […] this English thus as [it] is from Latin). The English translation is hence the inferior byproduct of the original. The underlying assumption is that the Latin is the language of learning and theological understanding, the English the language for the masses, for the more simple reader.

However, as Middle English devotional literature develops its own vocabulary and compositions separate from the translated text, there is a subtle shift in how the language is received and what it means to read in English. One of the more interesting places that this shift manifests itself is in the massive Latin compilation known as the Speculum spiritualium (The Spiritual Mirror, ca. 1400–30), which, despite clearly being written for the Latin-literate, deliberately contained some English text within it. This compilation, which in manuscript form Ian Doyle notes “occupies 208 leaves of large quarto format in double columns,” with approximately “315,000 words divided into seven parts,” was most likely Carthusian and contains pieces from several devotional texts—from usual suspects (Walter Hilton, ca. 1340/45–1396, for example) and also unusual ones (such as the text that will become the basis for Disce mori (Learn to Die), fifteenth century). While the vast majority of these texts are in Latin, there are three small excerpts in English: two poems (“Ihesu that art heven kyng” and “Mary thou were greet with loveli cheere”) and an excerpt from Richard Rolle's Form of Living (ca. 1348; Rolle, ca. 1300–1349).