The Medieval Hospital

Nicole R. Rice

Description

Nicole Rice’s original study analyzes the role played by late medieval English hospitals as sites of literary production and cultural contestation.

The hospitals of late medieval England defy easy categorization. They were institutions of charity, medical care, and liturgical commemoration. At the same time, hospitals were cultural spaces sponsoring the performance of drama, the composition of medical texts, and the reading of devotional prose and vernacular poetry. Such practices both reflected and connected the disparate groups—regular religious, ill and poor people, well-off retirees—that congregated in hospitals. Nicole Rice’s The Medieval Hospital offers the first book-length study of the place of hospitals in English literary history and cultural practice.

Rice highlights three English hospitals as porous sites whose practices translated into textual engagements with some of urban society’s most pressing concerns: charity, health, devotion, and commerce. Within these institutions, medical compendia treated the alarming bodies of women and religious anthologies translated Augustinian devotional practices for lay readers. Looking outward, religious drama and socially charged poetry publicized and interrogated hospitals’ caring functions within urban charitable economies. Hospitals provided the auspices, audiences, and authors of such disparate literary works, propelling these texts into urban social life. Between ca. 1350 and ca. 1550, English hospitals saw massive changes in their fortunes, from the devastation of the Black Death, to various fifteenth-century reform initiatives, to the creeping dissolutions of religious houses under Henry VIII and Edward VI. This volume investigates how hospitals defined and defended themselves with texts and in some cases reinvented themselves, using literary means to negotiate changed religious landscapes.

The hospitals of late medieval England defy easy categorization. They were institutions of charity, medical care, and liturgical commemoration. At the same time, hospitals were cultural spaces sponsoring the performance of drama, the composition of medical texts, and the reading of devotional works. Such practices both reflected and connected the disparate groups—regular religious, ill and poor people, well-off retirees—that congregated in hospitals. In this book, I argue that hospitals constitute unique yet neglected sources for late medieval English literary and cultural history. Taking a new approach to literary history and its institutional contexts, I highlight hospitals as porous sites whose practices translated into textual engagements with some of urban society’s most pressing concerns: charity, health, devotion, and commerce. Within these institutions, medical compendia treated the alarming bodies of women, and religious anthologies translated Augustinian devotional practices for lay readers. Looking outward, religious drama and socially charged poetry publicized and interrogated hospitals’ caring functions within urban charitable economies.

The primary texts included in this study range from the canonical (the York play, John Lydgate’s poetry) to the obscure (the Breviarium Bartholomei, Copland’s Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous). Hospitals provided the auspices, audiences, and authors of such disparate literary works, propelling these texts into urban social life. Between about 1350 and 1550, English hospitals saw massive changes in their fortunes, from the devastation of the Black Death, to various fifteenth-century reform initiatives, to the creeping dissolutions of religious houses under Henry VIII and Edward VI. In the heated decades of the 1530s and 40s, when religious regimes hinged upon rhetorical choices, public strategies of representation might translate into a hospital’s demise or its survival. My study investigates how hospitals defined and defended themselves with texts, and in some cases reinvented themselves in the sixteenth century, using literary means to negotiate changed religious landscapes.

Historians of English hospitals, including Carole Rawcliffe and Miri Rubin, have offered detailed accounts of individual English hospitals and traced the late medieval histories of poor relief and medical care in which these institutions figured. Literary historian Theresa Coletti has considered hospitals as sites for religious performance in the mass and liturgy and proposed the East Anglian hospital as a context for “devotional theater.” Some pioneering studies have investigated the copying and exchange of religious books at hospitals, yet it remains true today, as Rawcliffe argued in 2002, that “the ownership and use of books by hospitals is . . . a neglected area of research.” To date there has been no book-length account of hospitals in relation to English literary and cultural practice. Rawcliffe has also noted that scholars have not always attended carefully to how hospital culture was constituted because so much artistic evidence of English hospital life was destroyed during the Dissolution years. Hospital cultural practices, she suggests, are due for a “radical reassessment.” I contribute to this reassessment by mapping the literary histories of three premodern English hospitals: St. Leonard’s, York; St. Bartholomew’s, London; and St. Mark’s, Bristol. Founded in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, respectively, by the later medieval period all were Augustinian institutions, located in England’s three most populous cities. These hospitals are distinguished by well-documented histories and rich surviving archives. And although they shared certain liturgical and cultural assumptions, their differing resident populations, caring functions, and positions within their home cities made for distinct trajectories during the fraught centuries of my study.

The range of texts that I include in The Medieval Hospital—drama, history, medical treatise, poetry, devotional prose in Latin and Middle English—reflects the diversity of the three hospitals’ populations and the range of their social interventions. Amid this variety, two important themes stand out: the importance of the Augustinian Order and its spirituality to the literary lives of the three hospitals, and the prominence of women within hospitals, as residents, patrons, and readers. I will suggest that a distinctive Augustinian approach to regulation, reading, and spirituality may have guided some of the canons in charge, influencing the construction of lay devotional practice and spiritual friendships within the three hospitals. Also crucial are the hospitals’ roles as homes for women, manifesting differently in each case. Women were objects of intense concern and, in some cases, powerful agents within hospitals. Hospitals offered shelter to women at vulnerable stages of life and extremes of the social spectrum: destitute pregnant single women and affluent widows congregated at St. Bartholomew’s. Within the hospital, texts were composed and copied to advise both groups. Nurses served as the primary caregivers at hospitals, and though they left few written records, at the sixteenth-century refoundation of St. Bartholomew’s the matron became a figure of signal importance. Women, in a variety of roles and life stages, formed a constant object of hospitals’ care and were central to their textual cultures.

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: English Hospitals as Spiritual, Medical, and Literary Communities

1. St. Leonard’s Hospital, Civic Drama, and Women’s Devotion

2. Corruption and Purification at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London: The Book of the Foundation and John Mirfield’s Compilations

3. Lay Reading in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Close: John Shirley’s Final Anthology

4. Collaborative Devotional Reading at St. Bartholomew’s and St. Mark’s

5. Poverty, Charity, and Poetry: Critique and Reform Before the Dissolution

6. Dissolution, Disappearance and Refoundation: Textual Strategies of Reconstitution

Epilogue: Rites for the Dead and the End of Purgatory, 1540–52

Bibliography

Sujets

• Médecine
• Médecine Générale
• Religion
• Christianisme
• Literary Criticism
• Medieval
• health
• HISTORY
• Edad Media
• English Reformation
• York Mystery Plays
• Middle English literature
• Augustinians
• Middle Ages
• Christianity
• Great Britain
• Bristol
• London
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268205102
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE MEDIEVAL HOSPITAL
MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN
Series Editors: David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson
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THE MEDIEVAL
HOSPITAL

LITERARY CULTURE
AND COMMUNITY
IN ENGLAND, 1350–1550

NICOLE R. RICE
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2023 by the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023930797
ISBN: 978-0-268-20511-9 (Hardback)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20513-3 (WebPDF)
ISBN: 978-0-268-20510-2 (Epub)
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
For my family
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: English Hospitals as Spiritual, Medical, and Literary Communities
ONE . St. Leonard’s Hospital, Civic Drama, and Women’s Devotion
TWO . Corruption and Purification at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London: The Book of the Foundation and John Mirfield’s Compilations
THREE . Lay Reading in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Close: John Shirley’s Final Anthology
FOUR . Collaborative Devotional Reading at St. Bartholomew’s and St. Mark’s
FIVE . Poverty, Charity, and Poetry: Critique and Reform before the Dissolution
SIX . Dissolution, Disappearance, and Refoundation: Textual Strategies of Reconstitution
Epilogue: Rites for the Dead and the End of Purgatory, 1540–1552
Notes
Bibliography
Manuscripts Index
Subject Index
FIGURES Figure 1.1. York Minster, South Clerestory Window, Purification Figure 2.1. London, British Library, MS Royal 10. E. IV, fol. 286v Figure 2.2. Oxford, Pembroke College MS 2, fol. 153r Figure 3.1. Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 59, fol. 59v Figure 4.1. Cambridge, Gonville and Caius MS 669*/646, p. 81 Figure 4.2. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 2v Figure 4.3. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 3r Figure 4.4. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 112v Figure 4.5. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 178v Figure 4.6. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 179r Figure 4.7. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 179v Figure 4.8. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 180r Figure 4.9. London, British Library MS Harley 4987, fol. 121v Figure 4.10. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 182r Figure 4.11. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 181r Figure 4.12. London, British Library MS Additional 10392, fol. 181v Figure 4.13. Oxford, Bodleian MS Lyell 38, fol. 4r Figure 4.14. Bristol, St. Mark’s Hospital wall painting Figure 4.15. Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 173 fol. 34r Figure 4.16. Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 173 fol. 34v Figure 5.1. Copland, Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous , fol. C4 Figure 6.1. London, St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, the “Charter Window” Figure 6.2. Ordre of the Hospital , title page Figure 6.3. Ordre of the Hospital , preface Figure 6.4. Ordre of the Hospital , passport for the poor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was developed with the support of many institutions and individuals. I hope to have remembered all of them below and apologize to any I have missed. A St. John’s University summer research fellowship in 2015 and a research leave in Fall 2016 allowed me to begin surveying hospitalassociated manuscripts and conceptualizing the project. I was privileged to receive an NEH Fellowship in 2018, which gave me crucial time to complete the bulk of research and writing. I thank St. John’s University for providing ongoing support of my research, including a generous book subvention to offset production costs. For more than a decade, the English Department has given me a dynamic intellectual home full of generous colleagues. I am grateful to the New York Public Library and NYU Bobst Library for facilitating my research via the MARLI program.
Research on this project took me to numerous archives: I am grateful for the professionalism and kindness of their librarians. I spent many hours in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital archive, whose staff (Clare Button, Dan Heather, Kate Jarman, Rachael Merrison) proved unfailingly helpful. I thank Laura Cracknell of Pembroke College, Oxford; Petra Hoffman of St. John’s College, Oxford; Guy Mitchell of Gray’s Inn; and Marc Statham and Paul Binski of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, for their assistance and answers to many follow-up requests. I am likewise indebted to the staff of Bristol Archives, Bristol City Council, Bristol Public Library, the British Library, Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, London Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives, York Archives and Local History, and York Minster Library. St. John’s University Library interlibrary loan supplied me with countless obscure materials, and Dorothy McGovern assisted me in finding materials needed to finalize the book.
Conferences and seminars offered valuable chances to present work in progress. I am grateful to all the organizers and participants of these gatherings. They helped me to rethink my arguments, opened up new sources and ideas, and, above all, allowed me to connect with others interested in medieval hospitals and their cultural meanings. The Harvard Medieval Colloquium and the Victoria University Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies gave me places to present early work on the first chapter. I am grateful to the NYU Medieval and Renaissance Center and the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium for the opportunities to share work on medical texts and devotional manuscripts. The Early Book Society allowed me to present my work on Bristol manuscripts and on women at the reformed St. Bartholomew’s. I was honored to speak on women at St. Bartholomew’s at the Instituto de Historia at the Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales. For welcoming me in Madrid, I thank Raúl Villagrasa-Elías, Cristina Jular, Fernando Mediano, and Salvatore Marino. While I was working on the book, Robert Hanning invited me to join the New York Meds, a lively seminar whose members welcomed me warmly and responded incisively to material from several chapters. I thank each of them for their kindness and rigor.
Many wonderful colleagues assisted this project at different points. Lisa Cooper and Tanya Pollard offered sage advice on fellowship proposals and support throughout. Mary Erler and Michael Sargent supported those proposals and helped at every stage: from reading chapters, to suggesting and lending sources, to answering last-minute calls for translation help. I am grateful to Jennifer Brown, an extraordinary coeditor, for reading the book manuscript multiple times and for helping me to stay sane while writing. Margaret Aziza Pappano and Matthew Sergi read the drama material with characteristic insight and made crucial suggestions for improvement. Margaret Connolly’s astute reading helped me to improve the John Shirley discussion, and Julia Boffey’s careful editing of the Harlaxton paper enabled me to envision chapter 4. I am grateful to David Aers, Sarah Beckwith, and James Simpson, the editors of the ReFormations series at University of Notre Dame Press, for sponsoring this project. I thank former editor Stephen Little, Editor-in-Chief Eli Bortz, and Managing Editor Matthew Dowd at UNDP for shepherding it to completion. The readers for UNDP offered extremely constructive feedback that helped immeasurably, and Scott Barker provided excellent copyediting. I take full responsibility for any remaining mistakes or infelicities.
I am grateful to generous colleagues who shared expertise, references, and advice to further this project. Many thanks to Marlene Hennessy and Kathryn Smith for their sound counsel on medieval images and equally for their friendship. For sharing work in progress on St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, I thank Caroline M. Barron. For helping me to decipher Mirfield’s medical recipes, providing manuscript information, and inviting me to the medmed listserv, I thank Monica Green. For generously shar