Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson

Through her work and inspiration, Anne Hudson has not only transformed our understanding of important aspects of late medieval English religion and culture, but has also created one of the most productive fields of cross-disciplinary collaboration. In bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, and presenting a series of papers whose scholarship transcends their disciplinary roots, this volume is itself a considerable tribute to her achievement. It begins with George Rigg's affectionate encomium to the honorand in Latin verse (with English translation!) and the editors' useful introduction to the collection. It closes with a list of Hudson's books and articles preceded by a sketch of her work in progress on 'texts and religious sensibilities in the late medieval and early modern periods'.

The book comprises twenty papers, grouped under the headings of 'The Question of Sources', 'Wyclif's Influence and Reputation', 'Controversies and Reform' and 'Contexts of Vernacular Wycliffitism'. Though the papers are more for specialists than students, they all engage in the larger enterprise of reframing and reconceptualising aspects of the religious culture of late medieval England. The geographical range of the papers is extended by Peter Biller's analysis of modes of interrogation used by the inquisitors in Languedoc and Frantisek Smahel's examination of the acta of the trial of Jerome of Prague.

It is impossible to do more than note some of the findings of a few of the papers. By focussing on evidence for the clerical reception of the Twelve Conclusions, Wendy Scase offers new insights into the politics of 1395 and a new solution to the problem of the relationship between the Latin and English texts.

In the notabilia of Thomas Moston c.1410, Jeremy Catto finds further testimony to the continuing reputation of Wyclif as a logician at Oxford, and suggests 'how painful and inconvenient the uprooting' (p. 130) of his teaching on the orders of Archbishop Arundel must have been to many masters.

In a close reading of Reginald Pecock, who sought to engage with the Lollards in their own language and win them over by reason, Kantik Ghosh finds evidence for the coherence of the Lollard challenge and for the existence of a lay audience in London which had the ability and interest 'to engage, in a spirit of anxious religious inquiry, with vernacular theology and philosophy, in fact, with vernacular scholasticism' (p. 253).

Focussing on three parchmenters and a bookbinder involved in the Lollard rising of 1414, and drawing deeply on the relevant archives, Maureen Jurkowski throws new light on the production and dissemination of Lollard books in London. The story of John Godsell is particularly interesting. After brief imprisonment in 1414, he moved to Ditchingham in Norfolk, where he became a leading light in the Lollard conventicles in the district, organising the supply of Lollard books from London.

In a rich and wide-ranging discussion, Vincent Gillespie demonstrates and helps to explain the success of the Birgittine house of Syon as a bastion of reformist orthodoxy, from its foundation in 1415 to the Reformation. Favoured by the quality of its patrons and recruits, it was by no means 'immune to the tides and seasons of external opinion' (p. 139), as is apparent from the range of books in its collection, including a fifteenth-century Wycliffite glossed gospel. From the short lections included in the house's Martiloge, Gillespie reveals the emphasis placed on the quality of priests and sermons, and on the linkage between sound doctrine and good living. The resources of the library underpinned sound doctrine, while 'the lived example of the priest[s]' enhanced the effectiveness of their preaching.

All in all, the papers make up a rich tapestry. The editorial attempt to group the contributions under four headings was worthwhile, but none of them fit comfortably in any box. A lot of the interest in the volume comes from the raw angularity of the findings, the multiplicity of connections, and the subtlety and complexity of the picture that takes shape. The editors, Helen Barr and Ann Hutchinson, and the publisher, Brepols, have served scholarship well. But honour and gratitude are most due to Anne Hudson. As the last stanza of Rigg's encomium puts it:

Pro multis laboribus, post tam longum bellum,Tibi preparavimus sapidem morsellumPartibus durissimum, partibus tenellumOramus, accipias hunc parvum libellum!

[For your efforts for us all, after all the labour,For you we've prepared a dish, full of taste and flavour;Some of it's rather tough, some of it is tender:Please accept this little book, from a grateful sender.]