Citations from this post must be properly and appropriately acknowledged

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton. Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England. Notre Dame, 2006

In Kathryn Kerby-Fulton’s study of theological controversy and revelatory writing in Ricardian and early Lancastrian England, Books under Suspicion, the five-page list of the volume’s content itself makes for challenging reading, confronting us with a gallery of terms and names commonly and conventionally not employed in discussions of English religious writing of the period. Although Kerby-Fulton’s book is not without a measure of canonical conservatism (treating of e.g. Langland, Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich and central Wycliffite writing) it discusses the familiar always in conjunction with authors and theologians who are neglected and marginalised in medieval literary studies (Joachim of Fiore, Thomas Netter, Reginald Pecock, Richard Scrope, M.N., Uthred de Boldon, John of Rupescissa, Peter Olivi, William Ockham to name but a few). And the study tirelessly invokes or coins (often in compound form) concepts unfamiliar or novel in the context of English writing (e.g. Joachite Franciscanism, Amourian eschatology and antimendicantism, pelagianism, Olivian Beguini/ae, Free Spirit mystics, Cathars, Beghards).

Let it be said at the outset that Kathryn Kerby-Fulton has produced an ingenious, adventurous, groundbreaking, meticulously researched, hugely provocative, and, ultimately, defamiliarising study of the anxious and controversial religious scene of late-medieval England. It is her great accomplishment that even when she treats of a text as well-known as The Book of Margery Kempe (a text which perhaps more than any other begs for a period of scholarly rest) or Julian of Norwich’s Showings she manages to say something drastically new and to shift the terms of the debate, and she does so in a way more likely than any other recent monograph to set the agenda for future scholarship.

The crucial chronological account with which the study opens embodies the entire thesis of her book and the startling claim that a concern in England with popular and academic heresies other than Wycliffism constitutes an insular microcosm of, and a direct parallel to, fears and heresies facing ecclesiastical authorities on the Continent. We hear of flourishing Continental religious heresies, hysterias, enthusiasms, and complex registers of ecclesiastical response or persecution. And a pattern emerges of “small clusters of related persecutions in England and Ireland, at each historical point where an emergent heresy is being most pursued on the Continent” (32).

For Kerby-Fulton, the positing of such causal links calls for revisionist historiography. And it means positioning as central unrecognized instances of pre-Wycliffite orthodox inquisition, as well as later, and similarly unrecognized, non-Wycliffite heterodox manifestations on the fringes of sanctioned religious, doctrinal and sacramental practices.

The implications of such an account are twofold: Firstly, prominence is given to pluralistic notions of heterodoxy in which a proliferation of religious sectarianisms, divergencies and subcultures interact with one another, often through unpredictable avenues of influences and always across national boundaries. Secondly, Lollardy is allocated a space in the margins of heterodox historiography alongside other, potentially more radical, manifestations of dubious orthodoxy. In Kerby-Fulton’s account Lollardy comes to figure as a movement not merely disdainful of non-biblical revelatory and prophetic genres, but as a deeply reactionary force paling into conservatism when compared to radical Joachimism, Free Spirit heresy, liberal salvation theology, or Ockhamist philosophy.

In readings which themselves could be termed dissenting (as for example in the claim that “Ricardian writers were much more deeply intrigued by Ockhamist thought than by developing Wycliffite thought.” [333]) Kerby-Fulton voices an emphatic and welcome corrective to the tendency of scholars (often trained to see little else than the Lollardy that figures so prominently in contemporary records) to insist on the engagement of writers such as Margery Kempe, Julian of Norwich and William Langland with “the English Heresy.” No doubt, to several writers Lollardy was not a temptation or even relevant, and their writings ought themselves to render impossible any modern, narrowly insular understanding of religious non-conformism. In a brilliant chapter on Arundel’s “other Constitutions” we learn of attempts, now largely ignored by modern scholarship and overshadowed by the famous anti-Lollard Constitutions of 1407/9, to manage unauthorized miracles, revelations and manifestations of religious enthusiasm.

Clearly moderating our impression of the period in the direction of more widespread tolerance and a brighter, more adventurous and capacious/accommodating religious culture, Kerby-Fulton writes in response and opposition to “a methodological penchant in current historicism emphasizing what has aptly been called “Foucauldian gloom.”” (6) This means emphasising intellectual autonomy and theological experimentation, and at the same time insisting on the essential inadequacy of rigid orthodox-heterodox bifurcation. Recurring labels such as “radicalism,” “left-wing orthodoxy,” and “unorthodoxy” serve to describe precisely those grey areas between sanctioned theology and devotion on the one hand, and the theological-judicial category of heresy on the other, with its emphasis on the wilful rejection of Church authority more so than on religious content.

It is another significant accomplishment of Books under Suspicion that it refuses to reiterate that weary and insufficiently questioned orthodoxy of cultural representation which assumes “orthodoxy” itself to be the stable backcloth against which more audacious and subversive theological statements are uttered. One wonders here if Kerby-Fulton’s volume is intended as a response to the tendency, represented in for instance the influential Powers of the Holy by David Aers and Lynn Staley (now already ten years old and a likely representative of the “Foucauldian gloom” addressed in Books under Suspicion) to postulate a uniform and unreflective ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and, further, to construct an oppositional narrative between this orthodoxy and its rejection by the Lollards.

However, the narrative thread of Books under Suspicion is not entirely dismissive of opposition, generated as it is by an awareness of the fraught relationship between spiritual and academic autonomy on the one hand and ecclesiastical suspicion and condemnation on the other. It is characteristic of several forms of radical and novel theology that became subject to suspicion that they made creative use of the genre of revelatory writing, and seem to have found in this mode a safe refuge to a large extent resistant to censorship. Four areas of non-Wycliffite radicalism and concomitant suspicion are singled out by Kerby-Fulton, and form the substance of her study:

“(1) suspicion about the writings of Joachim, and/or later Franciscan Joachites who contravened John XXII’s decrees on evangelical poverty; (2) antimendicantism, especially since the condemnation of William of St. Amour’s eschatology, which “evoked the same sense of crisis as the Joachites he attacked;” (3) suspicions about the Continental heresy of the Free Spirit, enigmatically related to sporadic evidence of concern about the rise of radical mysticism, including Marguerite Porete’s anonymously transmitted The Mirror of Simple Souls; (4) suspicions about teaching speculative doctrines in the universities, as indicated by the inquisition of Ockham at Avignon, or the condemnation of disendowment theology in Oxford in 1358, or the censuring of Uthred de Boldon’s radical salvation theory of clara visio in 1368” (39).

Although these four areas are laid out with exemplary clarity here, the study would have benefited greatly from a more systematic and clearer determination (perhaps in an appendix) of the theological and intellectual content of tendencies such as Beguine intellectualism, Joachimism, Free Spiritism etc., or at the very least of Kerby-Fulton’s understanding of such categories, especially since these are by no means the subject of scholarly consensus, now any more than they were in the Middle Ages. A real risk, and one not sufficiently acknowledged in the study, is that of making various sectarianisms appear deceptively demarcated and self-aware when the sources themselves all too often disallow such representation.

As an example of the openness and tolerance in fifteenth century England toward continental radicalism in revelatory guise, the case of the German mystic Hildegard of Bingen is discussed. Although constantly surrounded in England by an air of suspicion and controversy, her writings appear never to have been officially censored, despite their reformist prophecy and apocalypticism, controversial exegesis and bitter attacks on friars. Some contemporary annoyance with English medieval Hildegardiana is noted, articulated by Archbishop Pecham and by John Wyclif, who condemned it as extra fidem scripture. Curiously, Kerby-Fulton sees the main opposition to Hildegard’s revelatory theology as stemming from the scrupulously rationalist theology of Bishop Reginald Pecock in the mid-fifteenth century. Motivated by a “deep suspicion of revelatory modes, scholastic in temper” (201), Pecock condemns Hildegard as guilty of revelatory and doctrinal heresy. Undergirding such reading is the claim that “in the end… the revelatory and the scholastic were rivals for the prize of theological illumination, rivals, however, with contempt for each other’s methods.” (189) But such opposition, here overemphasised, is clearly more apparent than real, and the study later goes on to problematise the divide by stressing the implication of speculative university theology in revelatory theology. It is paradoxical that, in the determination to present Pecock as intellectually and temperamentally intolerant of revelatory theology, Kerby-Fulton ignores Pecock’s own recourse to the mode of spiritual revelation, in the form of his extended and divinely authorised intellectual visio in the introduction to his key pastoral-theological work The Reule of Crysten Religioun (c. 1443). His writing is better viewed, I would suggest, as an attempt to reconcile the academic and the revelatory, and thus to confer legitimacy on the genre used by Hildegard (though clearly not on the finer points of her theology). It is more paradoxical still that in a study emphasising tolerance and intellectual freedom, the opportunity is not taken to present Pecock, an exemplar of precisely such virtues and one who insisted on responding to heresy with reasoned argument and not, in his own phrase, with “fier, swerd or hangement,” as anything else than intolerant and condemnatory. Pecock finally, and perhaps inevitably, was granted the full retirement package of trial, book burning and incarceration, but it bears witness to at least some tolerance and intellectual leeway of the time that this did not occur until a decade and a half (c. 1457) after he was able to launch vitriolic attacks on clerical incompetence, to question the authority of Augustine, and, shockingly, to insist (with the Lollards) that the real nature of the sacrament of the Eucharist is figurative and memorial.

To seize on such misconception in Kerby-Fulton’s comprehensive study may seem disproportionately pedantic, were it not for the fact that it recurs in several of her readings as a result of conclusions being drawn on the basis of what is often a highly selective use of material – and material, that is, rich in what the author terms “functional ambiguity” and often inherently conflictual to the extent that they can be taken at times as indices of radicalism or conservatism, of tolerance or intolerance, or, indeed, of “left-” or “right-wing orthodoxy” depending on which features one chooses to highlight.

In chapters six and seven the author looks at possible influences of continental trends in Free Spirit thought and radical female preaching on the devotional life of fifteenth century England. Specifically, she sees in works such as The Chastising of God’s Children, the annotations by M.N. in Margerete Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls and the writings of Walter Hilton, not just evidence of detailed awareness of the latest vogues in suspect Continental doctrines in England from the 1380s on, but also a coherent attempt, most likely emerging from within Carthusian circles, to launch a “preventive campaign” and to articulate a “preventive theology” (269) with a view to containing audacious, speculative mysticism and the errors of ecstatics.

In what is one of the strongest argued parts of the book, Kerby-Fulton uncovers an appealing ambiguity in the reception of Continental spiritual works in which Middle English adaptors are clearly drawn towards such material for the exciting possibilities they seem to offer in terms of individual spiritual advancement (and, one suspects, for their audacious theologising), yet simultaneously alert to the danger they pose to sacramental, liturgical observance, especially where enthusiasm and heightened contemplation threaten to trespass into the arena of speculative theology. It is in this environment that Kerby-Fulton situates the M.N. commentator of Porete’s Mirror and The Chastising of God’s Children and its incorporation of Jan Ruusbroec’s Die Geestelike Brulocht as an up-to-date critique of free spirit, and non-Wycliffite, drives. According to this reading, the author of Chastising found it urgent to translate Ruusbroec, in whom he found a tone of measured caution, in order to counter widespread interest among vernacular readers in autonomous or overly-ambituous spirituality. But such a reading risks overlooking the complex reception process by which Ruusbroec’s Brulocht found its way into English, and it sidelines the well-documented controversy that surrounded the text’s early reception. Notably, the Middle English author draws entirely on the second book of Brulocht with its emphasis on self-examination and spiritual misguidance, thus omitting the entire third book which more than smacks of questionable orthodoxy and propounds extremist notions of divine unio and the divinization of the individual (c. 1400 Jean Gerson condemned the book as guilty of preaching pantheistic union. Marleen Cré has noted evidence of Carthusian awareness of Gerson’s condemnation¹). Conflating the voices of Ruusbroec and the author of Chastising does not give due account to the polemical specificity of the Middle English version and the process of interventionist adaptation through which Ruusbroec was moderated, indeed censored, for an anxious and suspecting English milieu. Whether or not the author of Chastising saw it as urgent to incorporate Ruusbroec for his cautious treatment of the interior spiritual life, he certainly saw it as urgent to provide a safely censored redaction, deleting controversial passages from a work thought to be potentially damaging in unedited form.

Even so, Kerby-Fulton’s study is valuable for outlining what seems to have been coordinated efforts to harness the forces of revelatory theology and to tone down the intensity of devotions together with anything even vaguely suggestive of quietism, pelagianism, claims to unbroken contemplation, eucharistic radicalism and so forth.

It is surprising, in this context, that little except passing reference is made to the vernacular pastoral theology of Walter Hilton (in which I include the crucial Prickynge of Love with its prolonged treatment of singularity and ecstatic dissent), and his Latin writings in which he engages more directly and polemically with spiritual freedom. Not only does Hilton provide some of the most explicit descriptions of non-Wycliffite heresy and its doctrinal content, he also elaborates a coherent theology (likely influential on M.N. and the author of Chastising, who target identical doctrinal issues) designed to check enthusiasm and anything doctrinally transgressive. To be sure, some mention is made of Hilton and his short Eight Chapters on Perfection (269), and this is intended less a critique of a study which, though vast in scope, is bound to make omissions in its attempt to cover such a complex area: much of the merit of this investigation lies in its outlining of the contours of an exciting new area of research and then generating opportunities for future scholarship to explore. However, the question should be asked if the story of responses to revelatory radicalism and Continental heterodoxies can be told adequately without substantial reference to Hilton, and without positioning works such as Prickynge of Love, and Scale of Perfection as absolutely central to such pre-emptive doctrinal strategies. As with too many studies of devotional culture in late-medieval England, this study also does not do sufficient justice to the achievement and popularity of Hilton’s pastoral theology. Nor is substantial account taken (except one reference p. 268) of the brilliant and theologically sophisticated scholarship of J.P.H. Clark, published in The Downside Review, which scrutinizes the theological aspects of Free Spirit heresy and explores the role of Cambridge University in launching a co-ordinated campaign against the influx of continental heresies into England.²

The last two chapters of Books under Suspicion explore the impact on Chaucer and Langland of the radical salvational theories of the two controversial Oxford theologians William Ockham and Uthred de Boldon, both proponents of condemned doctrine. While there are some impressive readings here, they do little to strengthen the earlier advertised thesis of the book (which is somewhat lost sight of in these later chapters), and even less to enhance its tenability.

Expanding on her previous scholarship on Joachite overtones and learned reformist apocalypticism in Piers Plowman, Kerby-Fulton hypothesizes about the changing nature of Langland’s text as he moved into a new climate of constraint on discussions of daringly liberal salvation ideas. A stress on doubt and radical unknowability in the A-Text, here seen as a literary negotiation of ideas proposed by Ockham, is played down in the later versions, which are more comforting and conventional on personal salvation. The question remains, however, whether Kerby-Fulton’s readings over-stress Langland’s consciousness of doctrinal danger and theological controversy, and if authorial radicalism is not confused with a potential for radicalism, especially in a protean religious setting in which a short period of time could easily render a text more radical than intended.

Chaucer is similarly analysed as a literary explorer of the destabilising effects of Ockhamist philosophy. Here Chaucer’s engagement with a classical, humanist tradition is set aside in order to highlight his preoccupation (primarily in House of Fame) with the far-reaching radical potential of the academic predestination debate and Ockham’s notion of divine potentia absoluta.

If such seriously original analyses are what make this book such an enthralling read, they also constitute its main shortcomings. Firstly, and despite the occasional disclaimer, Books under Suspicion does not detach itself from assuming that writers offer their writing in conscious response to significant achievements in revelatory and speculative theology of their time. With the readings of her earlier chapters finely attuned to “functional ambiguity,” it is curious that towards the end of the volume central Ricardian writers are presented as seriously engaged with such issues to the extent that a coherent theology can be distilled from their works. Secondly, Books under Suspicion becomes progressively more speculative, with readings so eager to break new ground that the result ocasionally becomes unconvincing, conjectural at best. What, for instance, does it mean to say that Chaucer and Langland were “intrigued” by Ockhamist thought, and what degree of familiarity (if any) on the part of Ricardian writers is assumed when it is stated that “Ockhamist influence was much more pervasive among all our writers than concrete evidence of Wycliffism”? (335) As “educated guesses” (348) are made about the exchange between literary and academic authors, the precise nature of such exchange, and the question of the availability of sources of learned radicalism to literary writers, will be for future scholarship to try to uncover.

The declared purpose of the book’s final chapters is “to illuminate the spots where Langland and Chaucer write revelatory material that might, at least in reception if not conception, be mistaken for Ockhamist ideas under academic inquisition for ‘creating doubt.’” (338) But to suggest tentatively shared positions, and then to proceed as if these are proven facts is a non sequitur which, viewed cumulatively, suggests the leap of faith which this book frequently requires its reader to make across chasms of uncertain juxtapositions, hypothetical exchanges and broadly common themes.

One final thought about Kerby-Fulton’s representation of the distinction between different manifestations of heresy. It is frequently claimed that the authors under consideration never conflate Wycliffite and non-Wycliffite forms of dissent, but seem intent to keep them apart. I wonder if this is not partially an effect of perspective or distance. Late-medieval writers, contemporary with varied currents of Lollardy/Wycliffism and Free Spirit thought, may not always have been as concerned, or able, to make clear-cut demarcations, but instead note common modes of behaviour and subversive thinking (notably on the sensitive topic of eucharistic radicalism). By contrast, we, from our perspective of centuries, can take the longer view and note various respects in which heresies differ in their doctrinal and methodological content. Thus, The Chastising of God’s Children is presented in Books under Suspicion as a “very clear understanding of Free Spirit thought,” (265) displaying little (though demonstrably some) concern with Lollards. But, I would tend to see in this important text rather a sort of “slippery slope” understanding of heresy, in which spiritual and intellectual misguidance and lack of discretion lead to presumption which may in turn lead to a rejection of the Church’s means of grace. And here it becomes uncertain, and less relevant perhaps, whether the author has in mind Free Spirit, Wycliffism, or indeed the cult of sensory devotions initiated in England by Richard Rolle. A quick look at Chastising reveals a myriad of more or less obscure terms used to describe dysfunctional or heterodox impulses: “singularity,” ”sectes,” “fals opinions,” “enthusiasm,” “contrarious lyueng,” “presumpcion,” “negligence,” “sikenesse,” “reste,” “fredom,” “falsnesse,” “spiritual lecherie,” “ydelnesse,” etc. Could it be that, instead of communicating a “lucid understanding” (265) of Free Spirit heresy, the Middle English author made cautious linguistic choices, chose deliberately vague epithets, and relaxed the doctrinal specificity so as to avoid explicit engagement with, and thus highlighting of, one specific heretical grouping?

i. Marleen Cré, ””We are United with God (and God with us?)”: Adapting Ruusbroec in The Treatise of Perfection of the Son’s of God and The Chastising of God’s Children.” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, E.A. Jones, ed. Cambridge, 2004. 21-37.
ii. See e.g. ”The ’Lightsome Darkness’: Aspects of Walter Hilton’s Theological Background,” The Downside Review 95 (1977) 95-109; “Walter Hilton and ‘Liberty of Spirit’” The Downside Review 96 (1978) 61-78; “Richard Rolle: A Theological Re-asessment,” The Downside Review 101 (1983) 108-39; “Walter Hilton and the Stimulus Amoris,” The Downside Review 102 (1984) 79-118.