Life of Soul (Lyfe of Soule) is a short anonymous prose tract written in the late Middle English of the English Midlands about 1400 or a little earlier.
Form The tract takes the form of a catechetical dialogue, or at least begins that way, one interlocutor falling silent about halfway through; of the three surviving versions, version L represents itself as a conversation between two "friends in Christ"; versions A and H replace this pair with a questioning sister and answering brother and a questioning son and answering father respectively. Life of Soul consists of six questions together with the corresponding answers. The first five questions are introductory, the sixth provokes a lengthy reply that forms the bulk of the tract. The tract begins with the eternal question, "How does one get to heaven?"; answers, "Through Christ who is the life of our soul" --identifying that life with faith and renunciation of sin--; and proceeds to the final question that forms the structural motif for the tract: "What are the food and drink that nourish the life of soul?" The rest of the text explicates the answer: the soul's bread is faith in Christ and its drink is adherence to his words. Faith in Christ is divided into faith in his divinity and faith in his humanity, the relevant tenets of the creed being listed under each. Christ's words are explained as being summed up in the two commands of love: to love God and one's brother. These two words, it is explained, comprise all ten of the Mosaic Ten Commandments (duly listed and accounted for); they combat the seven deadly sins (each duly listed, its defeat by love explained); they inspire their adherents to perform the corporal works of mercy(duly listed); and they nourish and are nourished by six virtues: peaceableness, patience, meekness, poverty in spirit, truth, and chastity. Each virtue is then exemplified, largely from the Sermon on the Mount; meekness by, among other things, the Lord's Prayer as the exemplarily prayer of the meek, a device which allows the author to expound the Lord's Prayer.
Audience Version L of Life of Soul (the version that forms the basis for available modern editions) appears to have been addressed to a lay audience, version A perhaps adapted for "religious" (i.e., those who, like monks, live under a rule). Two features of the tract would suit it for a monastic audience: the constant use of the words "brother" and "brethren" to describe fellow Christians; and the subject matter of the work: Christian perfection, especially as that is laid out in the so-called "Evangelical counsels" or "counsels of perfection" found in Christ's Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-6). According to a considerable tradition, these "counsels," too demanding to be imposed on the ordinary believer, are the preserve of those with a calling to the monastic life. But the counsels to perfection were embraced by many individuals and movements that were not monastic; and there is nothing specifically monastic about their interpretation here: the work inculcates faith, good works, and the avoidance of such universal faults as anger, pride, and malicious gossip. Even poverty and chastity are recommended in universal terms. The tract also mentions Christ's strictures against divorce, hardly relevant to monks. It is noteworthy that version A, perhaps adapted for a monastic audience, adds to this section the comment, "In order to set us an example of chastity, Christ chose for his lifespan this manner of life [i.e., celibacy], as did many of his apostles." The social class of the audience is similarly difficult to specify. The author addresses remarks to both the poor, who are warned that material poverty in itself is valueless, and the rich, who are warned that wealth used selfishly damns the possessor. These warnings could well be directed toward contemporary society (e.g., toward friars and prelates respectively), rather than toward actual members of the anticipated readership.
Contents Traditional features Most of the materials of which Life of Soul is composed associate it with the large and diffuse category of catechetical manuals, basic manuals of religious instruction, in which annotated lists of virtues, commandments, works of mercy, etc., are a staple. Seven such enumerations formed the basis of Archbishop Peckham's plans in the previous century to educate the English laity and secular clergy. According to the canons of the Council of Lambeth (1281), every parish priest was to explain these seven to his parishioners four times a year. In 1357, Archbishop John Thoresby issued a similar set of instructions to the clergy of the Province of York, commissioning this time a vernacular version (the so-called "Lay-Folks' Catechism") which became the religious best seller of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.The Latin version is known as the Ignorantia sacerdotum. For the vernacular version see Thomas Frederick Simmons and Henry Edward Nolloth, ed., The Lay Folks' Catechism..., EETS os 118 (London, 1901). Further see Robert Raymo, "Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction," in J. Burke Severs and Albert E. Hartung, eds., A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, (New Haven, 1967- ) 7:2270-71. A similar set of lists was popularized through the extremely influential contemplative manual by Edmund of Abingdon, the so-called "St. Edmund's Mirror," widely distributed in Latin, French, and English versions.See Valerie M. Lagorio and Michael G. Sargent, "English Mystical Writings," Manual, 9:3116-17, for a list of the various versions. The Mirror contains chapters, for example, on the seven deadly sins, the seven evangelical virtues (based, like the virtues in our text, on the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount), the twelve articles of the creed, the seven works of mercy, directions on the contemplation of God in his humanity and in his divinity, the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer, and the ten commandments, of which "the first three pertain to the love of God, the latter seven to the love of one's brother."Vernon Manuscript ME version, ed. Carl Horstman, Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole...and his Followers (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895-6), 1:248; Latin versions, ed. Helen P. Forshaw, Edmund of Abingdon: Speculum Religiosorum and Speculum Ecclesie, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 3 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 60-61. Life of Soul falls somewhere within the vast tradition of devotional manuals which flows from these influential headwaters. According to the taxonomy of the manual tradition proposed by C.A.Martin, Life of Soul is of type 5: instructional manuals that combine the catechetical enumerations with moral and devotional material so as to provide guides to a more perfect way of life.C.A. Martin, "Edinburgh University Library 93: An Annotated Edition of Selected Devotional Treatises," diss. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1978; cited by Raymo, "Works of...Instruction," 2273. For another attempt to classify some groups of Middle English devotional writings, see the introduction to Peter S. Jolliffe, A Check List of Middle English Prose Writings of Spiritual Guidance (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974). Life of Soule resists most of the handiest labels and categories. Even the Manual of the Writings in Middle English, compelled by its comprehensive design to place every Middle English work in some category or another, has failed to find a place for the Life of Soul: it does not treat it in volume two as a Wycliffite text, or a Biblical translation, or an instruction for nuns or monks; nor in volume three as a dialogue; nor in volume seven as a work of religious or philosophical instruction, instead directing, "for The Lyfe of Soule, a dialogue on the life of Christian perfection intended for both a lay and a religious audience...see the chapter on English Mystical Writings [in volume nine]."Severs and Hartung, ed., Manual, vol. 7 (New Haven, 1986), pt. XX ("Works of Religious and Philosophical Instruction," by Robert Raymo), p. 2331. But of course Life of Soul does not appear there either. The truth is, the tract enjoys some affinities with each of these categories, though the affinities are stronger with some than with others. The "dialogue" and "mystical" categories are probably the least apt: the dialogue form contributes little to the work and fades almost completely away by the end. And as for mysticism, at best, Life of Soul belongs among those works of religious devotion that invoke affective themes in pursuit of a basically didactic or catechetical end, such as the Mirror of Life (Speculum Vitae),Most readily available in its prose version entitled "A Mirror for Laymen and -women": Venetia Nelson, ed., A Myrour to Lewde Men and Wymmen: A Prose Version of the Speculum Vitae, Middle English Texts (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1981). See Raymo, "Works of...Instruction," p. 2262 and Valerie M. Lagorio and Michael G. Sargent, "English Mystical Writings," Manual, pt. XXIII, 9:3096-98. the Abbey of the Holy Ghost,See Raymo, "Works of...Instruction," pp. 2340-41. or even The Imitation of Christ.John K. Ingram, ed.,The Earliest English Translation of...the De Imitatio Christi, Early English Text Society Extra Series 63 (London, 1893). The only thing mystical about the Life of Soul lies in its insistence on connecting motive and behavior, on enumerating commandments and virtues not as duties to be performed or habits to be formed so much as symptoms of an underlying ardent love for God and, through God, one's neighbor, which must be cultivated by the devout Christian—a theme that looms large among the established mystical or quasi-mystical English authors, especially Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton, but far from exclusively so. Life of Soul shows no interest in contemplation or extraordinary spiritual experience, its interest being rather in normative experiences of faith and love. Nor is it interested in distinguishing the active from the contemplative life, or, indeed, in any of the various approaches to knowing God that found favor among the English mystics.
Distinctive features Given the bulk and inaccessibility of the comparative material, it is difficult to be sure how distinctive Life of Soul is. Most unusual, perhaps, are its structure and manner of argument. The structure is based on an elaborate set of associations that link every basic aspect of Christian dogma and practice, with the notable exception of the seven sacraments (penance in particular being notable for its absence), with the inner spiritual life of love and faith. The association of the ten commandments with the two gospel precepts of love was made already by Jesus and by Paul, and is a constant feature of treatises on the commandments. But the expansion of this scheme that Life of Soul employs, managing to stretch the precepts to subsume the evangelical virtues (idiosyncratically listed), the works of mercy, the seven deadly sins, and even the Lord's Prayer, is probably unique, as is its identification of works (as expressed in the two gospel precepts) and faith (as expressed in the creed) with the "drink" and "bread" that nourish the life of soul.