Guillaume de Deguileville (translated), Grace Dieu (also known as The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man and The Pilgrimage of the Soul)

Middle English prose translation of the French verse narratives Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode); and of the Pèlerinage de l’âme (The Pilgrimage of the Sowle). This is largely in Lincolnshire dialect, marginal glosses in Latin, scrolls in English, Latin, and French.

Textual Contents[i]

Fols 1r-95v. Grace Dieu (or, The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man), beginning with the

Prologue: 'Here bigynnes ƿe prolouge opon  ƿe boke whilk is named. Grace dieu. translate oute of ffrennsh in to ynglyssh as it folowes.' (Here begins the prologue upon the book which is named Grace dieu, translated from French into English as it follows, fol. 1r); Geoffrey Chaucer, An A.B.C. The Pilgrims’ prayer to our Lady and other prayers (fols 74v-77v); Prayer of the Pilgrim before his death (fols 93v-95r). A partial note in the scribe’s hand appears at the bottom of 95v ‘. . . ƿis buke and ƿe second part bigynnes in ƿis next qware’ (This book and the second part begins in the next quire)

The Pilgrimage of the Soul

Fols 96r-101v. Opening unrubricated: '[A]s I lay slepyng in my bed on a saynt lawrence nyght I fel in a full merveylous dreme and as me semyd…' (Text in five parts, with twenty-two verse sections).

The twenty-two verse sections are as follows:

Fols 102r-107v. [Thomas Hoccleve] The piteous complaint of the Soul.

Fols 112-114v. [Thomas Hoccleve] Here is the letter Grace sent to the sick man.

Fols 121r-122v. [Thomas Hoccleve] The charter of Mercy’s pardon.

Fols 125r-126r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Pilgrims’ song.

Fols 125v-126r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angels’ song.

Fols 126r-127r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angels’ song.

Fols 127r-127v. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angels’ song.

Fols 161v-165v. [Thomas Hoccleve] The green tree’s lament for the loss of her apple.

Fols 194v-195r. The Angels’ song for the Feast of All Saints.

Fols 196r-197r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angels’ song in honour of the Conception of Our Lady.

Fols 197v-198r. The Angels’ song for the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady.

Fols 199r-199v. The Angels’ song for the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lady.

Fols 199v-200r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angel’s song for the Purification of Our Lady.

Fols 200v-201r. The Angels’ song for the Assumption of Our Lady.

Fols 202r-202v. The Angels’ song for Christmas day.

Fols 204v-205r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angels’ song for the Feast of the Epiphany.

Fols 205v-205v. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angel’s song for the Holy Feast of Easter.

Fols 206v-207r. [Thomas Hoccleve] Adam’s song on Easter Day.

Fols 208r-208v. The Angels’ song for the Feast of Christ’s Ascension.

Fols 208v-209r. [Thomas Hoccleve] The Angels’ song for the Feast of Pentecost.

Fols. 212v-213r.  The Angels’ song for the Feast of Trinity.

Fols 214v-215v. The Angels’ song in the Feast of Corpus Christi.

Numerous letters at the beginnings of sentences and names throughout the text are touched with red. Fifteenth-century English-style blue initials ranging from one to three lines high with red pen-work mark sections of the text. From the larger of these initials, which head chapter divisions, extend long red marginal flourishes.

Seventy-one unframed, pen and ink drawings, nine to sixteen lines high, and mostly the width of the text column, are interspersed throughout the manuscript. Usually they are situated above a rubric, although sometimes the rubric precedes the illustration. These drawings are in a similar ink to the text. Scrolls designed to identify the figures or the action appear in most of the compositions. They have been left blank, however, from fol. 49 on (except for fol. 92). Up to fol. 57 some of the drawings are tinted red, brown, yellow, dark green and blue; several of these appear to have been left unfinished. All following drawings are in pen and ink only.

Program of Decoration and Illustration[i]

The drawings follow closely the text they accompany. For The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man the subjects of the thirty-seven scenes are as follows: fol. 1r Vision of the New Jerusalem; fol. 2v Grace Dieu appears to Pilgrim; fol. 4r Grace Dieu leads Pilgrim to her house; fol. 7r The sacrament of matrimony, and Moses gives the tonsure; fol. 8v Grace Dieu with Moses who ordains priest; fol. 11v Grace Dieu and official with Moses who administers the sacrament of the Eucharist; fol. 13r Dame Nature argues with Grace Dieu; fol. 15v Pilgrim sees Dames Charity and Penance with Moses; fol. 18r Charity between two trees; fol. 20r Moses and official administer the sacrament of the Eucharist; fol. 22r Dame Nature with Aristotle and Sapientia; fol. 25r Grace Dieu presents Pilgrim with staff and script; fol. 28r Grace Dieu shows Pilgrim his armour; fol. 34v Pilgrim meets Memory; fol. 36r Pilgrim with Dame Reason and the churl Rude Intent; fol. 40 Pilgrim is led by Dame Reason; fol. 45v Pilgrim meets Labour and Idleness at a forked road; fol. 47r Labour wields a spade (his scroll reads ‘Labor et occupatio’), Pilgrim is led by Idleness; fol. 49r Sloth captures Pilgrim with leg rope; fol. 51v Pilgrim is accosted by Pride, who rides on the shoulder of Flattery; fol. 57r Pilgrim meets Envy, on whose back ride Treason and Detraction; 59v Pilgrim is threatened by Detraction’s spear, fol. 61r Pilgrim meets Ire; fol. 63r Pilgrim meets Avarice, a huge monster with many arms; fol. 70v Pilgrim meets Gluttony and Lechery riding a pig; fol. 74r Grace Dieu enters, Pilgrim kneels to the Virgin; fol. 78r Grace Dieu shows Pilgrim the Rock of Penitence; fol. 79r Pilgrim crossing a sea is confronted by Satan; fol. 81v Pilgrim meets Maid Youth; fol. 82v Youth carries Pilgrim on her back across the sea; fol. 83r Pilgrim meets Dame Tribulation riding a wave; fol. 86r Grace Dieu shows Pilgrim the Ship of Religion; fol. 88r Pilgrim meets Discipline, Poverty and Abstinence; fol. 90v Pilgrim meets Sickness and Age, the messengers of Death; fol. 92r Infirm Pilgrim is met by Misericordia holding a rope noose; fol. 93r Death climbs on to Pilgrim’s bed, Grace Dieu and cross appear behind him.

The Pilgrimage of the Soul is illustrated by the following thirty-four scenes: fol. 97v Soul is conveyed by guardian angel to the Judgment Seat, a devil is behind; fol. 100r Soul before the Judgment Seat; fol. 110r Sinderis, the Worm of Conscience; fol. 111r Justice at the court speaks against the Soul; fol. 116r Mercy pleads for the Soul; fol. 118r Mercy questions Justice; fol. 120v Justice, Reason and Truth pray for release of souls; fol. 123r Council is held between accessories and the judge; fol. 124v Angels lead souls to Paradise; fol. 127r Soul moves towards Paradise, with angels making music; fol. 129r Hell mouth, souls with fiends; fol. 130r Souls are led to Hell; fol. 133r Prayers of Holy Church comfort souls in Purgatory; fol. 134r Angels apply the ointment of grace; fol. 136r Soul is shown fire of Purgatory; fol. 139r Angel with soul in Purgatory; fol. 140r Soul chained to a table and its cruel executors; fol. 140v Guardian angel shows Soul field of dead bodies; fol. 143v Soul is shown disputation among fiends; fol. 146r Hell-torments; fol. 147v Spiked wheel, torment for committers of treason; fol. 149v Torment for robbers and usurers; fols 150v, 151v, 152r more Hell-torments; fol. 154r The green tree and the dry tree, people beneath with apples; fol. 161v The two trees; fol. 166r Vision of asses buried in tombs; fol. 167v Soul is licked by Lady Doctrine; fol. 174r Knight on horse-back with statue; fol. 182v Knight in armour before lady; fol. 186r Souls led to gate of Heaven; fol. 187v the circles of Heaven (unfinished); fol. 206r Adam and Eve and many descendants beneath the tree of Paradise (based on Manion and Vines, 1984, pp. 110–12).

Folios 1r and 215v bear the signature of Sir John Roucliffe, Kt of Cowthorpe, South Yorkshire (d. 1531). Cowthorpe is a little over twenty kilometers north-west of the village of Cawood. Sinclair (1969, p. 364 n. 57) suggested that Sir John may have inherited the manuscript from his father, Sir Brian Roucliffe, who in turn may have received it from his father, Sir Guy. Rosemary Potz McGerr has noted that Sir Guy’s cousin, Guy de Rouclif (d. 1392), knew Hoccleve.[iv] Thus, the Roucliffe family may have had a personal interest in owning this manuscript, since it contains some of Hoccleve’s work. Sir Guy Roucliffe’s will mentions only one manuscript, a breviary (Portiforium), which was left to another son, John.[v] Furthermore, the wealthy Sir Brian certainly acquired manuscripts from outside his direct family. In his will he made bequests of a number of manuscripts, including a primer that he notes had belonged to his wife, and before that to her mother, and before her to someone else again.[vi] Potz-McGerr has proposed that the Melbourne manuscript may have passed from Sir John’s great-granddaughter, Anne, to Sir Ingram Clifford of Cowthorpe and of the Cliffords (of Chudleigh) when they married.[vii]

A number of inscriptions, whose significance has not been determined, may refer to owners: fol. 115v has perhaps an accusatory tone, if indeed the phrase is ‘Jehan bigamus’ in the fifteenth-century hand in the lower margin; fol. 148v has the name ‘Francys Franc’ in a fifteenth-century hand in the left margin; fol. 212v has the name ‘Arfferton’ in a crude and faint fifteenth- or sixteenth-century hand and fol. 217v has ‘Marke Reeves’ (?) in a seventeenth-century hand.

On the endpaper of the front cover of the seventeenth-century binding is a bookplate with the arms and motto of the Clifford family of Chudleigh ‘Semper paratus’. It is uncertain when the manuscript came into the possession of the Clifford family. This definitely had happened, however, by 1878. In that year, Lewis Henry Hugh Clifford, 9th Baron Clifford of Chudleigh (1851–1916), showed the manuscript to a Mr Ward, most probably Harry Leigh Douglas Ward (1825–1906), assistant in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. This was recorded in a long letter written by Ward in 1880, which is now housed in the State Library of Victoria.[viii] The letter refers to a fifteen-page discussion of the manuscript written by the baron’s brother, William Joseph Hugh Clifford, Catholic Bishop of Clifton (1823–1893). This is now housed with the manuscript. Another letter to Ward concerning the manuscript, by James Anthony Foude (1818–1894), is also housed in the Library.[ix]

J. Raine, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, 6 Vols, London, 1836–1902.

F.J. Furnivall, ed. Hoccleve’s Works, 3 vols, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, nos 61, 72, 73, London, 1892-1925; III, pp. li-lxii.

W.W. Skeat, ed.  The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1912, reprinted 1962), pp. 79-81.

A.B. Foxcroft, Manuscripts and Books of Art Acquired under the Terms of the Felton Bequest, Melbourne, 1938; pp. 10 and 17, and unnumbered illustration.

C. Brown and R.H. Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse, New York, 1943.

J. Smalley, The Poems of the Middle English Pilgrimage of the Soul, Liverpool, 1954 (manuscript).

C.A. McCallum, The Public Library of Victoria, 1856–1956, Melbourne, 1956, p. 91.

K.V. Sinclair, ‘Quelques manuscrits cisterciens inconnus en Australie’, Analecta Sacri Ordini Cisterciensis, 20, 1964, 233–6; p. 235.

R.H. Robbins and J.L. Cutler, Supplement to the Index of Middle English Verse, Lexington, 1965, pp. xix, 6, 28, 29, 30, 60, 121, 145, 146, 154, 181, 204, 263, 277, 280, 281, and 289.

A.I. Doyle and G.B. Pace, ‘A New Chaucer Manuscript’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 83, 1968, 22–34; p. 29,  note 37.

K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, pp. 364–68, no. 217.

P.D. Roberts, ‘Some Unpublished Middle English Lyrics and Stanzas in a Victoria Public Library Manuscript’, English Studies, 54. 1–6, 1973, pp. 105–18.

A.I. Doyle and G.B. Pace, ‘Further Texts of Chaucer’s Minor Poems’, Studies in Bibliography, 28, 1975, 41–61; pp. 41–44 and 49–55.

H. Maddocks, ‘The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man’ in the State Library of Victoria, Honours thesis, Department of Fine Arts, University of Melbourne, 1980.

A. Henry, ‘The Illuminations in the Two Illustrated Middle English Manuscripts of the Prose “Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of The Manhode”’, Scriptorium, 37, 1983, pp. 264–73.

M.M. Manion and V.F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, pp. 110–12, pl. 28, figs. 96–103, no. 45.

A. Henry (ed.), The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode, 2 vols, Oxford, 1985 and 1988, vol. 1 (1985), MS M, pp. xxxviii–xlii, and 176, and vol. 2 (1988) passim, but especially pp. 585–90.

A. McIntosh, M. L. Samuels, and M. Benskin, with the assistance of M. Laing and K. Williamson, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, 4 vols, Oxford and Elmsford, 1986, vol. 3, pp. 272–73.

R. Potz McGerr, The Pilgrimage of the Soul, New York and London, 1990, pp. xlvii–lii and lxxxvii–xcii.

D. Eichberger, ‘Image Follows Text? The “Visions of Tondal” and Its Relationship to Depictions of Hell and Purgatory in Fifteenth-Century Illuminated Manuscripts’, in Margaret of York, Simon Marmion, and the Visions of Tondal, T. Kren (ed.), Malibu, 1992, 129–40, p. 131 and fig. 84.

H. Maddocks, ‘“Me thowhte as I slepte that I was a pilgrime”: Text and Illustration in Deguilleville’s Pilgrimages in the State Library of Victoria’, La Trobe Library Journal, 51 and 52, 1993, pp. 60–69.

J.A. Burrow, Thomas Hoccleve, Aldershot, 1994, p. 24, note 96.

K.L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 6, London, 1996, vol. 2, p. 218.

S. Carmody, ‘Mirror of a World: William Caxton at the State Library’, The La Trobe Journal, no. 77, Autumn, 2006, 4–22, pp. 12 and 14–15.

J. Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England, Chicago and London, 2007, pp. 252, 254, 381 note 71, 382 note 86, and fig. 6.24.

S. Carmody, ‘William H. Robinson, Booksellers and the Public Library of Victoria’, The La Trobe Journal, 81, Autumn, 2008, 90–105, p. 95.

I. Cox, ‘The Rebinding of de Guileville’s Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode and Pilgrimage of the Sowle’, The La Trobe Journal, 81, Autumn, 2008, pp. 82–9.

S.A. G.V. Kamath, ‘Diversifying Knowledge: The Poetic Alphabet of the Prose Pèlerinage de la vie humaine’, in Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, R. Dixon and F. E. Sinclair (eds), Cambridge, 2008, 111–24, p. 122.

B. Stocks, ‘78, Guillaume de Deguilleville, The Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode and The Pilgrimage of the Sowle’, in The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia, and New Zealand, B. Stocks and N. Morgan (eds), exh. cat., State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 28 March to 15 June 2008, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 14, 197–8, and 228, pl. 78 and fig. 38, no. 78.

H. Maddocks, ‘Seeing is Believing: Reading the Deadly Sins in Deguileville’s Pilgrimage of the Lyfe of the Manhode in the State Library of Victoria’, in Imagination, Books, and Community in Medieval Europe, G. Kratzmann (ed.), Melbourne, 2009, pp. 205–11.

M.M. Manion, ‘Reading the Medieval Book in an Exhibition’, in Imagination, Books, and Community in Medieval Europe, G. Kratzmann (ed.), Melbourne, 2009, 13–48, p. 41 and fig. 38.

H. Hudson, ‘Lifelong Learning: The Pilgrimage Manuscript in the State Library of Victoria’, Scriptorium, vol. LXVI, 2012, pp. 382–89.

In the English translation of the first version of the Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man) the narrative is told by a monk. He begins by describing a dream he has had at the Abbey of Chalice (from the French ‘Chaalis’) in which he sees his ultimate destination as the Heavenly Jerusalem, but which he cannot enter because a cherub guards the way. The narrator then dreams about his life as unfolding from birth. He is guided on his journey through life by a female figure called Grace Dieu (literally, ‘Grace of God’). On his journey he meets biblical and historical figures, personifications of the Christian sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the virtues and vices. The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man ends when Death menaces the narrator on his sickbed, at which point he is woken by the clock ringing for matins at the Abbey.

In The Pilgrimage of the Soul (translated from Le Pèlerinage de l’âme) the narrator dreams that he dies, and as his soul rises, it is harassed by a devil. A guardian angel appears and takes the soul to a heavenly judgment, where it is decided he should be sent to expiate his sins in Purgatory. He sees the purging endured by other souls there, but is told by his guardian angel that prayer can relieve and shorten this suffering. The soul is then shown the torments suffered by the damned in Hell, differing according to the nature of their sins. Next, the guardian angel shows him a living and a dead tree, followed by statues of a man in armour and a naked man. The angel explains the  allegorical significance of these images. When the soul’s sins are finally purged, it rises to Heaven. There the guardian angel explains the nature of Heaven’s various parts and those that dwell within. The book ends when the narrator is woken by a flood of heavenly light from above.

The Melbourne book has been described as the only surviving manuscript to combine The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man and The Pilgrimage of the Soul.[ii] Of the twenty-four Middle English poems it contains – two within the text of the The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man and twenty-two within the text of The Pilgrimage of the Soul – nine are unique.[iii] The manuscript contains one of only two known illustrated copies of The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man (the other is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud misc. 740) and one of eight known illustrated copies of The Pilgrimage of the Soul.

For the most part no specific visual sources have been identified for the somewhat crude, yet always lively and engaging illustrations, which closely follow the text.[iv] Because, however, the placing of the illustrations within The Pilgrimage of Life of Man is similar to that in the Bodleian manuscript, and because of the textual similarities between them, it seems likely that they derive from a common source, which was also illustrated.[v]

There has been some discussion in the literature about the manner in which the two principal texts came to be joined together. During the rebinding of the manuscript in 2007 it was confirmed that fols 92r and 96r are conjugate, meaning that they are comprised of a single piece of parchment.[vi] Folio 96r is the last folio of the tenth quire, and fol. 97r is the first folio of the eleventh. There is an inscription on the bottom of fol. 95v, which evidently dates from the time the manuscript was made, indicating that the first book was intended to end in that quire, and the next book to begin in the following quire. The text of The Pilgrimage of the Soul now starts on fol. 96r, in a different hand from that of the main scribe and with spaces left for an initial and an illustration that were never executed. The question remains as to whether the beginning of the second book was copied onto fol. 96r after the manuscript had largely been illustrated and the initials painted, but still while the manuscript was first being created, as Henry suggested, [vii] or whether the text of fol. 96r was copied at a slightly later date and perhaps in a different location, as Potz McGerr suggested.[viii] In any event, it is clear that the two texts were intended to be bound together. There is some doubt, however, that the last two folios (216 and 217), which are single leaves rather than a bifolio, are original to the manuscript.

The translators of all the texts in the Melbourne manuscript are not known with certainty. However, The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man incorporates the poem dedicated to the Virgin, called ABC by modern writers. This is believed to have been adapted by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) from the similar poem in Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de la vie humaine.[ix] Thomas Hoccleve (c. 1367–1426) has been identified as the author of the verse translation known as The Complaint of the Virgin, in  Le Pèlerinage de l’âme, because it appears in an auotgraph manuscript of his poems (San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 111.[x] Despite the presence of some similarities to Hoccleve’s work in other poems in the Pilgrimage of the Soul, the existence of a number of differences makes it uncertain as to whether Hoccleve was involved in any further part of the translation of this text.[xi]

The language of the main scribe has been identified as a Lincolnshire dialect of English, while the language of the scribe for fols 96r-v has been described as ‘not in [Lincolnshire] English’.[xii] Potz McGerr suggested that while the sample of language of the latter scribe is too limited for a clear analysis, it shows features characteristic of the area on the border between Norfolk and Ely.[xiii]

The scribe who signed himself ‘Benett’ may be identical with ‘John Benet’, who was vicar of Harlington, in Bedfordshire, from 1443 to 1471.[xiv] He compiled a chronicle c. 1462–1468, now housed in Trinity College Old Library, Dublin (shelfmark TCD MS 516). It is generally thought that he was not the author of the texts he copied, although he may have made some minor contributions. In the Dublin manuscript, his signature appears thirteen times, usually in the form of the phrase ‘quod Benet’.[xv]

While the Dublin manuscript is written in a much less polished hand than the Pilgrimage, several of its signatures are very close to those in the Melbourne manuscript. For example, the signature on fol. 26r of the Dublin manuscript, ‘qd Benett’ is very close to the signature on fol. 95v of the Melbourne manuscript, also ‘qd Benett’. In both cases the ‘B’ is touched with red, the ‘e’s are looped (looking backwards to modern eyes), there is a descending terminal flourish, and the signature is underlined in red. Furthermore, the colophon on fol. 121r of the Dublin manuscript contains a ‘B’ for ‘Benet’, as does the signature on fol. 125v of the Melbourne manuscript. It is also noteworthy that John Benet’s chronicle in Dublin includes an English lyric to the Virgin (ending on fol. 26r), and that the Melbourne Pilgrimage of the Soul has a number of such interpolated English lyrics.

Chief Investigators (CIs) of the ARC project were Professor emeritus Margaret Manion (The University of Melbourne), Professor Bernard Muir (The University of Melbourne), and Dr Toby Burrows (The University of Western Australia). Graduate research assistants were Alexandra Ellem, Dr Hugh Hudson, Dr Elaine Shaw and postgraduate scholar Elizabeth Melzer (The University of Melbourne). Shane Carmody was the representative of the Chief Industry Partner (The State Library of Victoria). The following curators, conservators, photographers and computer specialists at The State Library of Victoria also contributed their expertise: Katrina Ben, Des Cowley, Ian Cox, Adrian Flint, Ross Genat, Jean Holland, Shelley Jamieson, Afsana Khan, Coralie McInnes, Monika McIntyre, Helen McPherson, Peter Mappin and Sarah Mason.

These detailed entries update the information in the earlier catalogues: K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, M. M. Manion and V. F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, and B. Stocks and N. Morgan, eds, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008. Our debt to these pioneering publications and dependence on them are acknowledged here.

Margaret M.Manion on behalf of the ARC team, October 2013.