By Shahrin Khan and Kelly Plante
On the surface, Gertrude More’s poetry illuminates her relationship with God as the most important aspect of her identity. More was, first and foremost, a religious writer. However, beneath the surface of More’s religious poems flows a politicalundertow, which the critical reception of More has long recognized. Editors of More’s works have mined her biography to generate critical introductions that connect her life with her writing. The critical introductions of the following three major, modern editions of More’s poetry reveal the editors’ shared identification of More’s politics as being at the center of her writing: Dorothy Latz’s “Glow-Worm Light”: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women, Arthur Marotti’s The Early Modern Englishwoman, and Benedict Weld-Blundell’s edition of The Inner Life of Dame Gertrude More. Each of these critical editions introduces More’s writing by examining her life through multiple lenses and by outlining the impact of her life events on her life’s work.
While these editorial approaches differ in content, each of them ultimately functions to bring politics front and center into the focus on More. In her 1989 edition, Dorothy Latz introduces readers to More through her family tree and her education. Latz first discusses More’s father, Cresacre, who wrote a biography about and created a home school based on the educational policies of his great-grandfather Thomas More. Her unique upbringing of following “in the pattern of great-grandmother ‘Meg’ and of grandmother Bassett” would lead More to her own “work and talents in translating Latin into English” (23). Latz then covers the unstable political climate that led More to join “those English recusants who had already fled to establish schools, colleges, and seminaries” in areas such as Cambrai, France, where she would take vows as a nun of the Benedictine religious order (24). By moving from More’s upbringing to Cambrai, Latz emphasizes politics as a cornerstone of More’s identity throughout her life.
While Marotti does not focus on More’s family dynamics in his critical introduction, he attributes her decision to leave England for the Continent to the influence of her confessor, Benet Jones, who was “part of a plan of reviving English monasticism” (Marotti x). Meanwhile, Weld-Blundell focuses on the significance of this political movement to revive English monasticism. He writes that “the storm of the Reformation had passed over the English nunneries” leaving desecrated monasteries in its wake (Weld-Blundell vi). In his introduction, Weld-Blundell thus prefaces the main subject, More, by situating her within the tumultuous political situation engulfing the Catholic Church.
In addition to situating More’s work within an overarching political climate, another major unifying theme across the editions by Latz, Marotti and Weld-Blundell manifests in the politically controversial figure of prominent English Catholic mystic Augustine Baker, who served as a spiritual guide to More. Ultimately, her relationship with Baker reinforces these editors’ interpretation of More’s life and writings as political. Latz describes Baker’s teachings as strewn throughout More’s poetry and prose, emphasizing Baker’s controversial status of being “ecclesiastically challenged by his Order at Cambrai because his teachings so resembled Protestant ideas” (25). Baker circulated books to the Benedictine nuns in More’s convent, encouraging them to read “Christian Neo-Platonism and the early medieval mystics” (26). With this knowledge foregrounded, readers of the Latz edition are prompted to think about More’s texts in the light of their challenge to the conventional ideas of the Catholic Church. Similarly, Marotti identifies the political underpinnings of contemplative prayer, a prevalent theme throughout More’s writings, as being in opposition to the appointment of Francis Hull, the confessor who publicly opposed Baker’s teachings. According to Marotti, More had “a crisis of obedience and authority,” which led her to write an Apology defending Baker (xi). Weld-Blundell calls More a “tower of strength to her Sisters, encouraging them by her cheerful confidence in God and by solid arguments” during Baker’s trial, a critical turning point for their convent (xxiv). For Weld-Blundell, in defending Baker, More showed her political skills by successfully defending her preferred form of spirituality against the political force of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
The editors’ analysis of More’s writings likewise reveals their political emphasis. Latz identifies More’s influences to show how they rendered her writing “a point of convergence between the English medieval mystical tradition and the Continental mystical tradition” (29). By incorporating divergent ideas from sources often seen as in conflict, More’s writing, appearing to the modern eye as simple and pertaining “only” to God, was historically a lightning rod that could attract criticism from multiple points of view. Marotti calls attention to More’s social agency when he identifies “the problem of relating to superiors who abuse their authority in impeding the course of prayer that enriches the contemplative’s relationship to God” (xv). Weld-Blundell refers to the Apology she wrote regarding Baker and his controversial methods as an “introduction and a defense of the spirit of which the ‘Confessions’ were the fruit” (xxxii). As these editors demonstrate, More’s works were not only strongly influenced by a political context, but they also participated in the religious politics of the Cambrai cloister.
Critics have recognized More’s writing for its combination of spirituality and politics. With this knowledge in mind, reading the following introductory lines of her poem, “Amor Ordinem Nescit,” illustrates the political nature of More’s mysticism:
My God, to thee I dedicate
This simple work of mine,
And with it also heart and soul
To be for ever thine;
No other motive I will have,
But by it thee to praise.
(ll. 1-6)
Because each of these major modern editions of More’s writing situates More’s “simple works” within a political context, the lines “no other motive I will have, / but by it thee to praise” takes on both a contemplative and political light.
Works Cited
Latz, Dorothy, ed. “Glow-Worm Light”: Writings of 17th Century English Recusant Women from Original Manuscripts. Universität Salzburg, Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1989.
More, Gertrude. Gertrude More, ed. Arthur F. Marotti. The Early Modern Englishwoman: A Facsimile Library of Essential Works. Series II. Printed Writings, 1641-1700. Part Four. Vol. 3. Routledge, 2009.
—. The Inner Life of Dame Gertrude More, ed. Benedict Weld-Blundell. Washbourne, 1910.