In the above quotation, John Trevisa explains how the element of water, because it has no ‘determinate’ qualities of its own, is ‘able’ to easily absorb various different properties from its surroundings. Water is sometimes salty, sometimes sweet and fresh, sometimes clear, sometimes cloudy, sometimes thick, sometimes thin. It not only has the ability to transform its surroundings – to carve out new paths, to drown, to nourish – but also to be transformed by them. Study of devotional works written by and for women in the later Middle Ages suggests that authors not only recognised water’s flexibility but also deliberately channelled it as a metaphor, using water in a similarly pragmatic way. This chapter reveals how the cultural understanding of water in the Middle Ages, borne out of scientific, medical and theological writings, allows the element to function as a particularly ‘able’, all-purpose metaphor for the authors of devotional texts, invoked in order to represent and illuminate multifarious – and often contradictory – aspects of the religious experience. This understanding of water as an all-purpose metaphor underpins the arguments made in every subsequent chapter of this book.

The range of references to water is almost overwhelmingly abundant in late-medieval devotional works, especially in those written for women, creating a large and multivalent tapestry of the element. In the first book of Walter Hilton’s fourteenth-century guide to contemplative life the Scale of Perfection, initially addressed to a woman who has taken religious vows but undoubtedly read by a much wider audience later in its transmission, there are numerous examples of this trend. In one instance, Hilton draws inspiration from the miracle at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11) to invoke water as a bland, tasteless substance in contrast to superior wine.