In 1658, Francis Gascoigne, a secular priest and brother to Abbess Catherine Gascoigne of the Cambrai Benedictines, published his edition of More’s writings under the title The Spiritual Exercises of the Most Virtuous and Religious D. Gertrude More. Gascoigne included several key texts not found in the Bodleian manuscript (More’s prose Apology and devotional fragments, poems on St Augustine and St Benedict, and a prefatory poem that may be partially authored by More). Yet as Gascoigne himself notes in the preface, he felt no scruples about reworking More’s texts through the addition of manicules and italics. Furthermore, John Clark’s meticulous comparison of the Bodleian manuscript and Gascoigne’s edition has revealed possible structural manipulations. Each version presents a different sequence of the prose meditations in Confessiones amantis, and Gascoigne’s edition also intersperses poetic fragments, primarily from “Amor Ordinem Nescit” and “Of Suffering and Bearing the Cross,” throughout the prose meditations, while removing the two doggerel poems that appear in the Bodleian manuscript.
