Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T01:12:59.432Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Reading Late-Medieval Piety in Early Modern England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2021

Get access

Summary

Writing in the preface to his A dayly exercise and experience of dethe (1537, STC 25414), Richard Whitford, the early sixteenth-century English Bridgettine Father and prolific author of orthodox devotional literature, explains that

This lytle tretie, or draght of deth, dyd I wryte more than .xx. yeres ago / at the request of the reuerende Mother Dame Elizabeth Gybs / whome Iesu perdon / then Abbes of Syon. And by the oft callyng vpon / and remembraunce of certeyen of her deuout systers. And nowe of late I haue been compelled […] to wryte it agayne & agayne. And bycause that wrytynge vnto me is very tedyouse: I thought better to put it in print. (sig. aiv–aiir)

Meditating on this passage in his introduction to A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, Vincent Gillespie has shown that the active engagement by Syon and other religious houses ‘with printers as part of a sustained campaign of defence of orthodox catholic teaching’ is at least as important for the early history of print as was access to the press by Protestant reformers and polemicists. For authors across the confessional spectrum, printed books offered unique material prospects for the dissemination of religious ideas, and the physical and financial opportunities afforded by printed books surely explain the central role of religious printing of all kinds in the development of the trade in English printed books.

The special role of Syon in cultivating interests in print has been central to Gillespie's work, shaping a field that importantly corrects the historical overemphasis on reformed writing in histories of the book in Britain and illustrates the role of late medieval piety in the pre-Reformation print tradition. Indeed, as J. T. Rhodes has shown, the number of printed books either originating from or associated with Syon before 1540 was ‘far higher than for any other religious house or order in England’, a fact that she attributes to the Cambridge education of many of the brethren, and the particular regard accorded to books within the double community. But the production of so many books would seem also to reflect the successful consolidation of markets beyond the abbey's walls.

Type
Chapter
Information
Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures
Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday
, pp. 209 - 242
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×