Pedagogy, Devotion, and Marginalia: Using The Pore Caitif in Fifteenth-Century England

This article examines manuscripts containing The Pore Caitif, a late fourteenth-century Middle English devotional manual. Whereas most studies of The Pore Caitif have focused either on the Wycliffite ideas and sources the tracts contain or on devotional material drawn from influential mystical texts, this study examines the patterns of marginalia that appear in these manuscripts in order to study what elements of the text attracted the attention of fifteenth-century users. While individuals could have used the work in a variety of ways, the marginalia indicate that many users focused on passages that teach basic catechetical details and ignored the elements that have attracted modern scholars to The Pore Caitif.