Female Readers and the Sources of the Mirror to Devout People

In the early fifteenth century there was increased interest in devotional writing by the laity in England. Educated women of the aristocratic classes were often interested in the commissioning of religious texts and had connections to religious houses and their books. This article focuses on two families, the Chaworths and the Scropes, who were known for their book collections. It also focuses on a book they owned, the Mirror to Devout People, a Middle English life of Christ. John Scrope, Fourth Baron of Masham, and his wife, Elizabeth, used their connections to Syon Abbey, the Birgittine abbey on the royal manor of Sheen, to obtain their copy of the Mirror. An anonymous Carthusian, residing at the monastery across the Thames from Syon, wrote the Mirror for a Birgittine sister. The Mirror relies on female saints—Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, and Mechtild of Hackeborn—to relate Christ’s Passion.