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COPYRIGHT 2002 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature
In 1944, Phyllis Hodgson published an edition of The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Priuy Counselling for the Early English Text Society. In editing these two texts, her base manuscript was London, British Library, MS Harley 674, a compilation which contains all seven of the texts conventionally grouped together under the heading `the Cloud corpus'. In 1949, working from the same base manuscript, Hodgson went on to publish an edition of the remaining five texts of this so-called corpus (Deonise Hid Diuinite, A Tretyse of pe Stodye of Wysdome pat Men Clepen Beniamyn, A Pistle of Preier, A Pistle of Discrecyon of Stirings, and A Tretys of Discrecyon of Spirites) for the Early English Text Society. (1)
Unfortunately, this choice of base text had the effect of obscuring Hodgson's doubts as to the common authorship of all the texts contained therein, making her presentation of the seven treatises appear more homogeneous than it actually was. And at least partly as a result of Hodgson's editorial ambiguity, confusion as to the authorship of the Cloud corpus texts persisted into the latter decades of the twentieth century.
In recent years the authorship and dating of this group of texts has come under renewed scrutiny. While such investigations have been valuable, they have tended to add to the confusion surrounding the composition of the Cloud corpus. (2) However, by considering previously unexplored evidence provided by the use of biblical quotation and allusion in the works associated with the Cloud corpus, this article will cause us to revise fundamentally our opinion of the dating and authorship of these texts.
On three separate occasions in The Cloud of Unknowing, the author can be heard to make explicit reference to `anoper mans werk'. Several critics, the most recent being John Clark, have understood these references to be to the first book of Walter Hilton's Scale of Perfection. (3) In 1995, Clark posited the following theory of mutual influence regarding The Cloud and The Scale:
If we accept that there was some contact, direct or indirect, between Hilton and the author of The Cloud, then some of the content of Priuy Counselling indicates that it was not only Hilton who was led to clarify some of his positions as a consequence of this contact, but that in turn his strongly incarnational emphasis led to further precisions in the work of the Cloud's author. (4)
This theory of mutual influence has, of course, implications for the dating of The Cloud, which Clark explores by reference to the chronology of Hilton's Scale:
Scale, 1 may be dated after Hilton's entry into the community of Austin canons at Thurgarton; within the chronological framework indicated by his other writings, it was probably completed by c. 1390. Scale, 2 can only have been completed a short time before Hilton's death in 1396.
While such dating seems reasonable enough, Clark does not recognize or highlight its inevitably suppositional nature, but proceeds to use it as the basis for his dating of The Cloud and Priuy Counselling: `So the Cloud may be dated to the very early 1390's, and Privy Counselling to the middle years of the same decade.' (5)
It is, however, worth questioning Clark's rather confused chronology, in which he never clarifies the exact order in which he sees each of the works proceeding. For example, he takes for granted that the first book of Hilton's Scale was written before The Cloud. (6) Although this is a highly plausible supposition, supported by the majority of critics (and accepted in this article), Clark does not draw attention to the fact that there is no obvious manuscript evidence with which it can be supported. What is, however, most questionable about Clark's chronology is his apparent assumption that The Cloud must have been written some four to six years after Scale I. (7) Indeed, his relative dating of Scale I (after Hilton's 1386 entry into Thurgarton and before c.1390) and The Cloud (very early 1390s) seems to test on the hypothesis that Hilton was aware of The Cloud as soon as it was written, and that he quickly incorporated what he had learnt from its terminology into the second book of his Scale. Yet there is no logical or evidential basis underlying this assumption, and indeed, it is just as likely, if not more, that The Cloud was written in the second half of the 1380s (fairly soon after Scale I was completed) but that it did not gain immediate circulation. It may simply have been, then, that Hilton did not learn of its existence or become familiar with it until the early 1390s. (8) This supposition would go some way towards relieving the congestion of Clark's chronology, in which The Scale, The Cloud, and Priuy Counselling stand in danger of being viewed as simple `replies' to each other, rather than as individual devotional works designed with the needs of specific audiences in mind.
Further, although Clark assumes that Priuy Counselling was influenced theologically by Hilton's Scale and that the second book of the latter was influenced by the terminology of The Cloud, it is never entirely clear whether he sees Priuy Counselling as pre- or postdating Scale II, which perhaps explains why he only tentatively dates Priuy Counselling to `the middle years' of the 1390s. This dating of Priuy Counselling is most problematic when viewed in conjunction with his positioning of The Cloud in the early 1390s. For Clark is in agreement with most critics in regarding Priuy Counselling as the last of the Cloud author's extant works. However, if this is the case, the Cloud author's writing career is compressed into a period of only about five years, and it becomes increasingly difficult to understand how, within Clark's chronology, he would have had time to compose all of the works attributed to him. (9) In this light, it seems most logical to posit the aforementioned alternative theory that The Cloud was written not, as Clark suggests, in the early 1390s, but in the late 1380s (or possibly earlier), and that Hilton became aware of its existence (or chose to reveal his awareness) only some years after its composition. Indeed, quite apart from the evidence provided by the fact that it is a very different treatise from The Cloud, Priuy Counselling itself hints that it is a substantially later work. (10) Furthermore, the hypothesis that the time lapse between The Cloud and Priuy Counselling is longer than that proposed by Clark is the only solution which allows the Cloud author a period of time convincingly long enough for the composition of all the works associated with him.
However, despite all this wrangling over precise dates, the overwhelming majority of critics accept that Priuy Counselling was composed after The Cloud, and that it was the author's last work, while The Cloud was his first. By comparison with this relatively neat positioning, the attempt to arrange chronologically the five other treatises conventionally associated with The Cloud (Deonise Hid Diuinite, A Tretyse of pe Stodye of Wysdome pat Men Clepen Beniamyn, A Pistle of Preier, A Pistle of Discrecyon of Stirings, and A Tretys of Discrecyon of Spirites) has been a tortuous and inconclusive affair. (11)
It is part of this article's contention that a new chronological perspective on the Cloud corpus might be gained by examining the differing methods of scriptural quotation contained in each of the treatises. The Cloud itself alludes to the Scriptures only in the vernacular, as do HD and Spirites, while Benjamin minor vernacularizes all its biblical quotations with only one exception. Priuy Counselling, Preier, and Stirings, however, all quote and translate directly from the Vulgate.
Various hypotheses can be suggested to account for this hermeneutic shift between the various texts of the Cloud corpus. For example, removing The Cloud itself from the equation for a moment, it is noteworthy that those texts apparently original to the author (Preier and Stirings) both quote directly from the Latin text of the Bible. However, those texts classified as translations or adaptations, namely HD (which can be attributed to the Cloud author), along with Spirites and Benjamin minor (whose attributions are doubtful), are all characterized by vernacular biblical quotation and allusion. (12) It is therefore possible that, in those works indebted to a source text, the Cloud author simply slipped into `translation mode', almost unconsciously vernacularizing biblical quotations along with the rest of the text.
Equally, these linguistic shifts could have been dictated by a growth or variation in the Latin capabilities of the author's audience. Indeed, it would be tempting to posit the theory that while those treatises which quote from the Vulgate are intended for a more proficient readership, those which allude to the Scriptures only in the vernacular are intended for those unschooled in Latin. And it is true, for example, that Priuy Counselling represents an advance on the teaching of The Cloud. Yet in general this is too simple a distinction to make. HD, for example, quotes from the Bible in English, yet it seems likely that Preier and Stirings, both of which make use of the Vulgate, would have been more easily accessible texts. It must, therefore, have been concerns other than (or, at least, in addition to) the ability of the audience which dictated these hermeneutic shifts between the texts.
Both Hodgson and Walsh made tentative attempts to link these hermeneutic disparities with the question of dating, but it was the latter who pursued the issue to a speculative conclusion, arguing that those treatises which quote from the Vulgate are likely to be later than those which allude to the Scriptures in the vernacular. (13) For, as Walsh argues, it would have been the later treatises which were most likely to have been affected by growing anxieties regarding biblical translation.
As is well known, the Lambeth Constitutions of Archbishop Arundel, promulgated...
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