Translating Clergie: Status, Education, and Salvation in Thirteenth-Century Vernacular Texts by Claire M. Waters (review)

Claire M. Waters's Translating Clergie: Status, Education, and Salvation in Thirteenth-Century Vernacular Texts offers a new and much-needed interpretation of post Lantern IV educational reform. She explores thirteenth-century vernacular didactic works, primarily in Anglo-French, whose homilies and narrative texts offered audiences a "new way of imagining themselves as religious subjects" (5). Though often dismissed in secondary literature as "basic" in its educational goals, Waters show how this genre engaged readers and hearers individually and worked to collapse status differences between learned and unlearned members of medieval society.

Waters argues that vernacular catechetical works of the thirteenth-century constituted a "crucial middle ground between the traditional spheres of laity and clergy" (24). They gave instruction to the better educated among the laity and the less learned among the clergy in language both could understand. The structure and content of these works also blurred hard lines between learned and unlearned, clergy and laity. The dialogue or dialogue-like forms of texts, such as the Dialogue du père et du fils and the Chastoiment d'un père à son fils, model face-to-face interactions of teachers and students or fathers and sons revealing an interactive and personal view of Christian education. The Latin and vernacular works of Honorius Augustodunensis (1080–1154) tailored its material to its audiences, revealing a marked sensitivity to lay learners. His model sermon collection, Speculum ecclesiae, instructed clerics how to adapt teaching according to an audience's reception and interest. Tired and cold parishioners got shorter sermons and preachers expanded lessons for attentive audiences. Honorius also encouraged priests to adapt their language to the native tongue of their congregations, with Scripture read in Latin and explanations given in the vernacular. Honorius reminded his clerical readers that they were "mirrors," or living examples to the laity. Waters sees in this an optimistic assumption that laymen and laywomen were capable of emulating clerical behavior.

Vernacular texts designed for private use by lay readers, such as Robert of Gretham's Miroir or Évangiles de domnées, reflected similar themes of lay empowerment. His work emphasized lay capabilities, offering them the "intellectual means by which to correct themselves, rather than simply providing that direction directly" (31). Robert provided lay readers with "clerical tools," such as a method of exposition for "dark and difficult" portions of Scripture, from which the laity began to take on a new role and status as educated Christians. In doing so, authors such as Robert wrote themselves out of the picture, emphasizing a shared pursuit of faith with the lay reader.

Didactic narratives such as revenant stories that focused on death and judgment motivated lay audiences spiritually while also minimizing the status differences between teachers and students. One account, given by the famous preacher Robert of Sorbon, featured a Paris master returned from hell to warn his former student to avoid "empty learning." Burdened by a cape woven of logical puzzles weighing "more than the towers of St. Germaine" he cautioned his student to fear the "therefore" of death more than its use in vain disputations. Accounts such as this collapse the status differences between teacher and student since both learned and unlearned must ultimately account for their actions at the Day of Judgment. They also highlight an important Christian paradox for those considering educational reform during this period: "It is good to learn, but only if you learn the right things; it is acceptable to be a holy fool, but not to be a fool tout court" (72).

In addition to softening the differences between the learned and unlearned, Waters notes how didactic literature of this period taught the "irrelevance of earthly status" across all levels of society (63). Vernacular sinner-saints accounts such as those found in the l'Évangile de Nicoème, conveyed complex doctrines such as the two natures of Christ as expected but also presented the "equalizing implications of Christian teaching" (95...